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TEXAS 



MASSACHUSETTS RESOLUTIONS. 



BY CHARLES FRANCIS i^AMS. 



BOSTON: 

1844. 

EASTBURN'S PRESS. 









The substance of this Essay has already been published in the col- 
umns of the Boston Courier, in nine separate newspapers. It is now 
sliglitly enlarged and put in a continuous form, in order that the views 
therein taken of two much disputed questions of great national interest 
at this time, as well as of the policy to be adopted by the Free States in 
respect to them, may be submitted entire to the impartial judgment of 
a free people. 



REMARKS. 



The People of the United States liave been lately taken 
somewhat by surprise upon the announcement that a Treaty 
was actually on foot between the xAmerican Government and 
Texas by which the annexation of the latter to the Union, 
the favorite measure of a great party in the country is at last 
to be effected. They had scarcely supposed that this ques- 
tion so lately thought to be put at rest was about to rise be- 
fore them again so soon and in so novel a manner. The 
newspapers, the usual organs by which events are an- 
nounced, for reasons wdiich may readily be understood, long 
abstained very carefully from sounding any alarm, and it was 
not until the measiu'e was almost upon us that they apprised 
us even of its existence. Even since the fact has become 
notorious beyond the possibility of contradiction, it cannot be 
said that they treat the subject in the full and open and un- 
disguised manner which its paramount importance to the 
country demands. The great mass of thinking people are 
not led fully to comprehend what it is that makes this point 
one of such deep interest to carry in some quarters of the 
Union, and in others to resist, nor are they prepared by the 
momentary and evanescent censure which they find now and 
then passed upon it to devise a plan of action which shall 
stop the whole movement, while there is time. 

And when we say movement, we do not mean by this 
simply the effort of John Tyler to finish the scheme by what 
the French would call a "coup de main." That is merely 
the end of what has been in the process of accomplishment 
for years back. Mr. Holmes of South-Carolina said in his 
place in Congress, that the annexation of Texas was " the 
settled policy of the government." His remark was full of 
meaning ; but how few are there in the Free States, who have 
been led to give it a moment's consideration .'' His remark 
may go somewhat to illustrate the motives of the appointment 
of Mr. John C. Calhoun to the Department of State, and 
yet the newspapers of the Free States of all j)arties seem to 
hail that a])pointment, as if it was the announcement of a sa- 
viour to the nation. If Mr. Calhoun is likely to save the 



4 



State by any policy which he introduces Into the administra- 
tion, then did George Washington greatly misconceive what 
that policy ought to be, in ihe legacy which he left to his 
countrymen. 

The annexation of Texas has been the settled policy of 
the government for many years past. But it has been only 
one of a series of measures which have constituted that pol- 
icy. Perhaps it was the one most difficult to accomplish, 
and therefore the longer delayed, that all the initiatory 
steps might be more firmly taken. There have been those 
in the Free States, who have watched the progress made 
with unsleeping vigilance, and who have more than once suc- 
ceeded in defeating the scheme for the moment, but it never 
has been laid aside. It never will be laid aside until it is ac- 
complished. Time will be given to remove from the scene 
the most powerful opponents, or to soften the roughest obsta- 
cles. But the thing will be done, peaceably if possible, 
forcibly if necessary. Let no man in the Free States hug 
the delusion that it is stopped, because two thirds of the Sen- 
ators cannot now be found to ratify Mr. Tyler's treaty. 
There are many ways in iVmerica to arrive at the same re- 
sult. If one fails, another will be tried. Money, promises, 
bribes, threats, will be used, bargains will be made, and the 
end of it will be, that unless they interfere with a voice of 
thunder to prevent it the people of the Free States will be 
sold, and Texas will be bought for the bauble of the Presi- 
dency. 

Even now there is living on the banks of the Hudson river 
an individual, the chief merit of whose political life is to be 
fo'ind in the fact that he, as President of the United States, 
refused to negotiate a treaty like that which John Tyler 
now proposes. The recollection of that act, at this time, 
weighs heavily against him and his hopes of again reach- 
ing the station which he lost. He has, through his friends, 
bargained away much that the Free States deem valuable, 
the right of petition, the protection of home industry, the 
freedom of speech, and, indeed, almost every other se- 
curity to liberty, for the sake of assuring himself of the sup- 
port of the Southern States. They are not yet satisfied. 
They require the surrender of all opposition to Texas, and it 
is to be feared that this also will be sacrificed to them. For 
instead of meeting half way the generous feelings of four fifths 
of the people of the Free States, indignant at this secret 
manoeuvre of John Tyler's, the Legislatures of at least three 
States friendly to Mr. Van Buren, have cooly determined in 
silence to await the issue. We were not disappointed in this 



result, for we know the calculating policy of that gentleman. 
The principles of liberty are never safe in the hands of men 
who make a trade of public affairs. Mr. Van Buren must 
be judged by his preceding course, taken as a whole — and 
from that let no man delude himself with the belief that he is 
fixed to any thing but his own interest. If the citizens of the 
Free States are to have any hope of maintaining to them- 
selves and their children the blessings of liberty, they must 
rely upon themselves. For their voice alone will form the 
potential rule by which the conduct of such men as Mr. Van 
Buren will be guided. And with regret it must be confessed 
that of such men, do, for the most part, our legislative bodies 
consist. 

In order to a full comprehension of the merits of this ques- 
tion, it is necessary to go a great deal deaper than Mr. 
Tyler's treaty with Texas. That is but an incident — an 
important one, it may be — but still only one of many, which 
spring from the same cause. What that cause is, few of the 
leading politicians of the present day dare to tell if they 
know. The exposure of it to the light is not a very safe 
process to any one ambitious of a share of power, to get 
which it is necessary to gain the assent of Senators from the 
Southern States. The Massachusetts resolutions ventured to 
point to that cause in a manner that could not be misunderstood. 
Hence the extraordinary way in which they have been re- 
ceived throughout the chain of the slave States, and in both 
branches of the federal legislature. Massachusetts struck 
directly at the root of the evil. She showed from whence 
came the policy which has already put fetters on the Free 
States, the galling nature of which they will only begin to 
feel when the annexation of Texas shall have brought its train 
of evils along with it, and the consequence has been a gen- 
eral burst of indignation from the parties interested in main- 
taining the delusion. It must be confessed that Massa- 
chusetts, in making the exposition which she did of the 
power wielded by the representation of property in man, 
conceded by the constitution of the United States, over the 
interests of the Union, went a step beyond public opinion, 
even in the Free Stales, and she has not yet been properly 
sustained in any quarter, but, on the whole, this is not to be 
regretted. There is time enough. Events will show whether 
she is right or wrong. If the duty of sustaining the great 
principles of human progress against attack, is to devolve 
upon any one, who so fit to lead as the people of Massa- 
chusetts ? 

Let no one, however, be so simple as to imagine that the 



6 

question thus opened can end here. Mr. Dromgoole of Vir- 
ginia may flatter himself that his resolution, forced through 
the House of Representatives at Washington at the expense 
of every privilege which makes a deliberative assembly valu- 
able to the people, will set it at rest for the present. But his 
action, and that of his servile majority, will only tend to sup- 
ply another illustration of the evil which Massachusetts point- 
ed out. That cannot be a good cause which stands in need 
of such aid to support it. That must be a tyrannical system 
which needs the protection of silent and hurried measures to 
prevent it from falling. If the eyes of this people are ulti- 
mately to be opened, no better means can be devised for the 
purpose than such as are now often and unblushingly resorted 
to for the purpose of keeping them blind. 

It is a remark made by Mr. Stiles, a representative of 
Georgia, in a late speech of his, vi^hich has been circulated 
far and wide, that " slavery and the constitution have Jlour- 
ishbd together ; their existence is the same and inseparable." 
Now if it were possible to destroy in the minds of respecta- 
ble citizens all respect for that instrument, no more effectual 
mode could be devised than to admit the truth of such a pro- 
position. For what does it imply ? Nothing more nor less 
than that the frame of government whicli all lovers of freedom 
had fondly hoped would pi'ove the greatest protection to hu- 
man liberty ever known, had actually proved the hot-bed for 
the forcing into rank luxuriance a system of tyrannical despo- 
tism by one class over another and larger class of their fellow 
beings. Mr. Stiles seems to speak as if it were conceded 
on all hands that the intention of the instrument was to guar- 
anty the perpetuation of slavery. Yet to admit this, would be 
equivalent to charging its framers with deliberate falsehood ; 
for they, in their preamble, expressly declare the object of 
the people to be "to secure the blessings of liberty to them- 
selves and their posterity," as well as " to establish justice," 
to ensure domestic tranquillity, to provide for the common 
defence and promote the general welfare." Is it then true 
or not true, what Mr. Stiles says of the constitution ; and if 
true, how comes it to be true in the face of so solemn a pre- 
amble, which so directly contradicts him ? These are seri- 
ous questions, and we propose to try to answer them with 
equal seriousness. 

The framers of the constitution meant what they said in 
the preamble. They were honest and honorable men. They 
well knew the character of the task which they had undertaken. 
They felt that the hopes of the people, ay, and of the friends 
of liberty all over the civilized world, rested upon the sue- 



cess of their eftbrls. And they labored to erect a system of 
government which shoukl answer the pubHc expectation. 
They strove to incorporate into it the safeguards of every 
knowm principle of liberty, and wdiat they did not formally 
recognise, the people, by amendments, insisted upon ex- 
pressly securing. Thus it was that the writ of habeas cor- 
pus was reserved, except in cases of extreme public danger, 
bills of attainder and ex post facto laws were prohibited, trial 
by jury was secured, convictions for treason should be had 
only upon the concurrent testimony of two witnesses to a sin- 
gle overt act, no corruption of blood should be made a pun- 
ishment of the offence, and republican forms of government 
were guaranteed to the several States. These were provisions 
made to guard against invasions of personal liberty, of which 
history had furnished examples under arbitrary governments 
on the other side of the water- But the people of the States, 
not content with all this, insisted upon articles of amendment 
which expressly guard against an establishment of religion, 
against the prohibition of the free exercise of speech by Con- 
gress, the abridgement of the freedom of speech or of the 
press, and the infringement of the right of the people to as- 
semble and to petition for a redress of grievances. So with 
their right to bear arms, and to be secure in their persons, 
houses, papers and efiects, against unreasonable searches and 
seizures, and also with their right to an impartial trial. All 
this, and more that might be enumerated, has but one end, and 
that is — " the securing the blessings of liberty to the people 
and their posterity" — the very end mentioned in the pream- 
ble. The care that was taken to define all these points suffi- 
ciently proves the sincerity of the persons engaged in making 
the form of government. They thought they were creating 
a republic, — or, as it is now more common though less proper 
to style it, a democracy. They recommended it, because it 
appeared to carry out the principles of the revolutionary 
struggle. It gave a practical sanction to the doctrines of the 
Declaration of Independence. The people thought so too. 
They ratified it and adopted it, and boasted of enjoying the 
freest government on the face of the earth. 

And yet Mr. Stiles tells us that " slavery and the constitu- 
tion have flourished together — their existence is the same and 
inseparable." The first part of the sentence, at least, is true. 
Slavery has flourished under the constitution. Not because it 
was the design of the constitution to make it flourish. No ! 
we abhor the idea as a slander upon our forefathers. It was 
because the framers of the constitution whished to deal mildly 
with an existing evil. They trusted to the healing influences 



8 

of the system which they were about to establish, gradually to 
remove the sore. They made a mistake. That sore has 
spread, and proves a corroding ulcer. For the sake of gain- 
ing the security to freedom in all the other provisions which 
have been specified, they unwillingly assented to one aristo- 
cratic condition, which gave to a small number of whites, in 
the slave States, a disproportionate share of political power, 
on account of their property in their fellow-men. That sin- 
gle aristocratic condition has, from its commencement, work- 
ed unmixed evil to the Union. It now bids fair to overturn 
and destroy all the safeguards of the constitution. It bids fair 
to make that instrument a mere nose of wax, with which to 
accomplish the selfish purposes of the class whom it protects. 
The policy of the United States has been and is to make 
slavery flourish under the constitution. Mr. Stiles says it 
has succeeded — thus far. Perhaps so. But it is as yet bare- 
ly established. The victory has not been gained without a 
struggle. And the last act yet remains to be done — the an- 
nexation of Texas — before it can be said to be beyond the 
reach of danger. This once accomplished, it will not be diffi- 
cult to foresee the consequences, as it respects any hope of 
effective counteraction on the part of the Free States. 

One of the least of these consequences is war. War with 
Mexico, certainly — with Great Britain, probably. Let the 
people reflect upon these matters well. For to them the re- 
sult is of no trifling importance. Jl war to protect slavery 
against the civilized world^ is the ultimate point of degrada- 
tion to which a nation, boasting to be free, is Hkely to be 
driven. 

Let us however now consider still more closely the asser- 
tion of Mr. Stiles, and let us ask ourselves whether the con- 
stitution of the Unhed States is what he leads us to infer it is, 
only a stupendous fraud upon mankind. He affirms that its 
object was to guarantee the existence of a state of domestic 
slavery in the Union, and that whenever that object should 
be made to cease, the constitution must cease also. We 
should not rest upon the argument of this individual, if we 
did not know that in it he represents the sentiments of the 
great mass of the people in the Southern States, who really 
believe that slavery is an inseparable attendant of our free 
institutions. We may wonder at the strange nature of the 
inconsistency committed by men who profess themselves to 
go to tlie extreme of democracy in doctrine, but such is yet 
the fact. Our business is rather with what is, than with what 
ought to be. The Legislatures of Virginia, of Alabama, and 
of Louisiana, as well as the House of Representatives at 



Washington, have all, by their action upon the Massachu- 
setts Resolutions, more or less committed themselves to the 
maintenance of the same proposition. They cannot now get 
away from it if they would. 

Yet in the face of all this, we will undertake at once, and 
unequivocally to deny, on behalf of the framers of the consti- 
tution, any such fraudulent intention. Tlie great body of the 
convention looked confidently to the day when slavery would 
be abolished in all the States. The celebrated Judge Wil- 
son announced it in the ratifying Convention of Pennsylvania 
as one of the most valuable consequences to be expected 
from the adoption of the constitution. George Washington 
looked forward to it, if not in the same light, at least as fol- 
lowing the voluntary act of the Southern States themselves. 
Thomas Jefierson, though not a member of the convention, 
yet a fair representative of Southern sentiment, was not a 
whit behind-hand in his professions upon the subject. The 
evil was then confined within comparatively small limits ; it 
was not rapidly growing under the stimulus of the production 
of an extraordinarily profitable staple, such as cotton has 
since become and such as sugar may yet become. It was 
generally believed at the time that the transplantation of the 
negro to America was an artificial process, which could only 
be kept up by perpetual importation, and that, without this, 
the race would decline and die out of itself. Hence the ori- 
gin of the efibrt to prevent the prohibition of the slave trade, 
resulting in the adoption of the first clause of the ninth section 
of the first article of the constitution, which put that trade 
beyond the control of Congress foi- twenty years, or until 
180S. This measure, if it meant any thing at all, was a meas- 
ure of precaution against the supposed tendency of the con- 
stitution, and by no means implies tlie opinion that slavery 
would flourish under its protection — an opinion which INIr. 
Stiles maintains to have been the prevailing one, and which 
he, with a greater appearance of justice, assumes to be the 
correct one. 

But how has it come to be a fact, if it be admitted to be 
true ? Is it not because the constitution gave to a hundred 
and fifty thousand men, owners of slaves, — a number which 
certainly has not doubled since, — a most disproportionate 
share of political power over the affairs of the Union ? It 
granted to them an aristocratic distinction of property which 
forever marked them a favored and separate class, acting to- 
gether for a common object, the maintenance at every hazard 
of their special privilege. The consequence has been that 
the power thus concentrated in few hands has met with no 



10 

corresponding combination in other quarters of the Union to 
resist il, and that it has overborne all opposition. The first 
struggle, which could hardly be denominated one, took place 
upon the acquisition of Louisiana to the United States — an 
acquisition obtained at the sacrifice of every constitutional 
principle that had ever been maintained in the southern coun- 
try. This enlarged the territory over which the exclusive 
privilege could be extended, and multiplied the number of its 
rej)resentatives in the Senate of the Union. The next strug- 
gle took place in 1819, at the time of the admission of Mis- 
souri, when a serious attempt was made to put a stop to the 
future increase of that number, by attaching a condition that 
the right of property in man should not be recognized in the 
new State. The champions of the exclusive privilege were 
here again victorious, and they have enjoyed the fruits of that 
victory down to this time. But the natural progress of 
events, which increases the citizens of the free States and 
territories much faster than the slave owners can multiply 
slaves, has again brought their power into danger — and now 
the third struggle is about to take place, which will open a 
new territory, of indefinite extent, already occupied by a 
sympathizing population active in cherishing the source of 
their political power, and originally transplanted from the 
United States to this spot it occupies, for the purpose of 
bringing about this very result. 

One of the most visible modes by which this small but 
powerful combination has exercised a great degree of influ- 
ence, has been through the election to the Presidency. Out 
of the now considerable period since the adoption of the con- 
stitution, there may be said to have been but one single term 
of four years in which this combination has not preponderated 
in the government — and the history of that term is the one 
which it has most zealously endeavored to decry. We mean 
the j)residency of the elder Adams. Out of fifty-six years, 
the combination has obtained a Chief Magistrate from a slave- 
holding section of the coiuitry forty-four years, and it held 
almost unlimited sway during four of the remaining twelve. 
The consequence may very easily be guessed. The gen- 
eral policy of the country has been that of protection to 
the interests of slavery. It is this which makes the words of 
Mr. Stiles true, and not any supposed intent of the framers 
of the constitution. Slavery has floiu-ished because those 
possessing the aristocratic distinction of propei'ty conceded in 
it have always held the balance of power, and they have al- 
ways used it with a single eye to the maintenance of their ex- 
clusive privileges. It is, then, not without reason that Mr. 



u 

Holmes has pronounced the annexation of Texas to have been 
the settled poUcy of the government. It has been so during 
the last twenty years, but there has been a difference in the 
nature of that policy at different periods, which those who 
now advocate it very sedulously conceal from the public view. 
In order that we may arrive at a true judgement of the 
facts, let us look at them a little more closely. 

The treaty with France, hy which Louisiana was ceded to 
the United States, left the Western boundary of that territo- 
ry very uncertain. When the question came up for settle- 
ment with Spain, which had the control at that time over the 
neighboring country of Mexico, it became the duty of the 
representatives of the two governments to argue it in that 
manner which should be most for the interest of iheir respec- 
tive nations. The Americans claimed the Rio del Norte as 
the boundary, which would embrace all tlie country now call- 
ed Texas, and more ; whilst the Spaniards, on the other 
hand, insisted upon a line running North from the Gulf of Mex- 
ico to the River Missouri, at about the ninety-third degree of 
longitude West from London, which would have taken off a 
part of what are now the States of Arkansas and Missouri, and 
much of the Western Territory. As is usual in such cases, 
an intermediate line was ultimately agreed upon by the treaty 
of 1S19, the third article of which, fixed the boundary at the 
River Sabine, up to the thirty-second degree of latitude, 
thence North to the degree of latitude where such a line 
would strike the Red River, thence westward along this river 
to the one-hundredth parallel of longitude west from London, 
thence north to the Arkansas River, thence along this river 
to its source in latitude forty-two degrees north, and thence 
westward along that parallel to the Pacific Ocean. In the 
annual message of President Monroe to Congress, of the 7ih 
December, IS 19, this was distinctly announced as a com- 
promise, in the following words: 

" On the part of the United States, this treaty was evidently acceded 

to in a spirit of conciliation and concession For territory 

ceded by Spain, otiier territory of great value to which our claim was be- 
lieved to be well founded, was ceded by the United States, and in a 
quarter more interesting to her." 

Now if we consider that the Floridas were the territory 
ceded by Spain, a territory for the sake of gaining which it 
may be remarked Mr. Jeft'erson himself whose authority has 
been much relied upon in this connexion, always stood ready 
to surrender the claim on Texas, we think it will scarcely be 
maintained by any one who will cast a glance upon the map, 
that this treaty was not, so far at least as territory is con- 



12 

cerned, and Southern territory too, an abundantly advanta- 
geous one to the United States. Yet Mr. J. Q. Adams, 
who was then in the Department of State, and conducted 
the negotiation on the part of the Union, has been most sin- 
gularly treated in connexion with it, by those who now un- 
dertake the management of the Texas cause. In the first 
place, they quote him as a strong authority, when he claimed 
on the part of this country, the farthest western boundary, 
which would have included Texas in our territory, and then 
forgetting the compromise in the treaty, by which that claim 
was surrendered, in consideration of the corresponding sur- 
render by Spain of the Floridas, as well as of its claim to a 
part of Arkansas and Missouri and the Western territory, — 
they insist that he betrayed the interests of the Union, by 
giving up this claim on the territory of Texas. They seem 
to forget or to neglect all notice of this contract by which ter- 
ritory was acquired in the place of what was quit-claimed, 
(for the right of the United States to Texas was never con- 
ceded by the Spanish Government, and therefore it never 
became more than a claim on our part,) and with a singular 
exhibition of justice and impartiality, they not only insist 
upon holding all that we got by the bargain, but also upon 
taking back a part of the consideration that we gave to get it. 
And the great argument by which Mr. Walker, who speaks 
for the Texan party, endeavors to support this extraordinary 
pretension is that Texas having become by virtue of the 
Louisiana treaty an integral part of the United States, no 
part of it could be ceded at all by the general government 
without the consent of its inhabitants. Mr. Walker appears 
to overlook the fact that in 1S19 when this treaty was made 
there were very (ew inhabitants in the territory to consult — 
that none of them were emigrants from the United States, 
and that those who were there, as they had never been 
consulted when the Louisiana treaty was made, so they were 
as little consulted when the claim was advanced which was 
to bring them within the limits of the Union. Probably 
if they had been, they would have adhered to the Spanish 
side of the question. The question was in substance a ques- 
tion of boundaries in a wilderness. 'Ihe United States 
have no right to insist at all times that their claim is not 
simply a just one as against neighboring nations, but that it is 
utterly impossible for them to divest themselves of it. Hence 
that every negotiation and treaty which surrenders such a 
claim is unauthorised and therefore wholly void. If this ar- 
gument is always to prevail, where are we to stop ? The 
boundaries of the territory of the Union are not yet per- 



13 

fectly defined in many quarters. Are we to assume that our 
rights shall be acknowledged by other nations, to the furthest 
'•n)it of what we can show any claim for? If we do, then 
vili there never be any possibility of settling questions other- 
wise than by war. It amounts to dictation to other countries, 
to which they will never submit — it can never be called nego- 
tiation with them. The great body of the people of the 
United States are not so tmreasonable as all this comes to. 
When a good treaty is made, which secures the great ob- 
ject of peace, and a definite boundary, equally satisfactory 
to both the negotiating countries, it becomes all honest and 
well-meaning citizens to abstain thenceforth and forever from 
all complaint and much more from any efibrt to annul its force. 

Yet we are not among those who can be said to approve 
of one principle which was contained in that treaty, as af- 
fecting the domestic concerns of the Union. We mean the 
acquisition of additional territory. The example had been 
unfortunately set by the cession of Louisiana, and a concur- 
rence of circumstances appeared to make the step almost un- 
avoidable. But we fear it has been, and will be, the parent 
of mischiefs innumerable. One of these has been, what Mr. 
Holmes calls the settled policy of the Government to annex 
Texas. Another is the present dis[)ute with the government 
of Great Britain, about the terrritory of Oregon. Why 
should the people of the United States want more lands, 
when they do not know what to do with those they already 
have ? Why should the twenty-six States seek to open new 
inducements to the emigration of their own citizens, when 
those already existing are so great as to make them uncertain 
of their ability to keep them at home ? Still there would be 
no impulse of this kind sufficiently strong to excite a reason- 
able share of alarm for the pacific policy of the Union, if it 
were not for the restless desire of the privileged class to per- 
petuate the sources of its power. 

The treaty with Spain of 1819, signed, sealed and duly 
ratified by the contracting parties, fixed the Sabine and the 
Red River as the boundary of the United States on the 
south-west. It surrendered all claim, or shadow of claim, 
to the territory of Texas. That was conceded to belong to 
Spain, whilst Spain held the control of Mexico, and it fell to 
the share of Mexico when that country made itself independ- 
ent. Shortly after the acknowledgment of her independ- 
ence, an effort was made to treat with her for the cession of 
Texas. That effort was made by Mr. Clay, under the ad- 
ministration of Mr. Adams. It is the beginning of what Mr. 
Holmes has denominated the settled policy of this Govern- 



14 

ment, and inasmuch as the fact has been very much rehed 
upon by Mr. Walker, and other friends of the annexation of 
Texas, as a justification of the extraordinary series of meas- 
ures since taken, it may be well to explain precisely to what 
it amounts. 

In the year 1824, or three years after Mexico threw off 
the Spanish domination, she adopted a constitution, wherein 
it was provided that "no person should thereafter be born or 
introduced as a slave into the Mexican nation." At this 
time the territory of Texas was comparatively a desert. 
There were but a few settlements, and none of them had 
shown any disposition to resist the policy thus declared. In 
J 825, Mr. Clay proposed the cession of the territory, for 
such a reasonable sum of money as to Mexico would be per- 
fectly satisfactory. It was the land that was in question, and 
not the institutions established in it, for none had been then 
established. It was an open bargain with a neighbor, which 
that neighbor was perfectly at liberty to agree to or to reject 
— and which it did reject in such a manner as to put an end 
to the negotiation. There was no fraud, no false play, no 
open profession and secret treachery. We may disapprove 
of the policy which sought for an enlargement of territory in 
this quarter, if we please, but we have nothing to be ashamed 
of in it. We may blame Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay for set- 
ting a precedent in this instance, so likely to be abused, and 
which in fact has been abused, but we cannot make them 
justly responsible for not foreseeing the train of evils which 
only the policy of the last fifteen years has brought to light. 

In short, Texas is not, and never was ours. We had a 
claim upon it, believed by us to be good, which we sold for 
more than it was worth. We have not, therefore, had a 
shadow of right to it since, and this pretence of getting round 
a solemn treaty for the sake of reviving a disputed title, set- 
tled, advantageously to us, long ago, is only one of many 
movements which reflect no credit upon the advocates of the 
annexation. Six years afterwards, it is true that the admin- 
istration of Mr. Adams offered to buy the territory from 
Mexico, before it was seriously encumbered with " the do- 
mestic institution," and before citizens of the United States 
had gone into it for the purpose of exciting disafiection, but it 
did not pretend that Mexico was not fully possessed of all the 
rights to it which Spain held under the Treaty of 1819, up to 
the period of the overthrow of her domination. The offer 
was made — it was declined, and there was an end of the bu- 
siness. In making it, the United States conceded the validity 
of the title by which Mexico held it. It would have been 



15 

well for the character of our diplomacy, if they had continu- 
ed, as at first, contentedly to abide by the refusal. 

But this was not destined to be the case. We must now 
go into a very brief examination of that which Mr. Holmes 
has called the " settled policy of the government," respect- 
ing Texas. We have no desire to say any thing unnecessa- 
rily harsh, either of active or retired public men, but a part 
of the truth, at least, must be lold. The whole has never 
yet been, and probably never will be, revealed to the public. 
If in any particular we commit errors from want of all the 
necessary evidence to substantiate our statements, we shall be 
glad to be corrected. The times demand that the facts 
should be presented with accuracy and without passion. 

General Jackson w'as elected President of the United 
States, and in March, 1829, assumed the office. Mr. Van 
Buren became his Secretary of State. On the 25th of Au- 
gust following, the latter gentleman wrote to our minister in 
Mexico, that the President wished him to open, without de- 
lay, a negotiation for the purchase of Texas. For that which 
the preceding administration had not thought of offering more 
than one million of dollars, the General was willing to offer 
four millions of dollars, or even as much as five. 

It must be noted that at this very time the government was 
aware of the fact that an expedition had been fitted out by 
Spain for the reconquest of Mexico, which appeared for some 
time likely to be successful. We refer to that under General 
Barradas. This was thought to be a highly favorable moment 
to press the offer of so large a sum of money. " It is" said 
Mr. Van Buren in one of his despatches "regarded by us as 
an auspicious one to secure the cession, and I will add, that 
there does not appear to be any reasonable objection on the 
score of delicacy, to its being embraced." 

The Mexican character is somewhat peculiar. It is indo- 
lent, but very stubborn- However delicate they might have 
considered the offer at such a moment, the money was no 
temptation, and the Spanish expedition came to nothing. 
Mr. Poinsett was obliged to write home his conviction " that 
we never can expect to extend our boundary south of the 
Sabine, without quarreling with these people.''^ 

Here was a hint. How it was taken, may best be under- 
stood by reading an extract from a newspaper, the Arkansas 
Gazette of 1830, which announced, "from information deriv- 
ed from a source entitled to the highest credit, that no hopes 
need be entertained of our acquiring Texas, until some other 
party more friendly to the United States shall predominate in 
Mexico, and perhaps not until Texas shall throw of the yoke 



16 

of allegiance to that government, which they will do, no 
doubt, as soon as they shall have a reasonable pretext for so 
doing." 

What was the "source entitled to the highest credit" from 
which issued so remarkable an oracle ? Who was it that 
thus succeeded in casting forward the shadow of coming 
events ? Was it the President's correspondent in Arkansas, 
the Secretary of State, Mr. Fulton .'' Was it Mr Anthony 
Butler, who had been in the confidence of the President in 
1829, and who succeeded Mr. Poinsett in Mexico ? or the 
still more remarkable person who became the instrument 
through which conjecture was made reality. General Houston ? 
We shall not pretend to any ability to answer these questions, 
but we shall endeavor to show as briefly as possible the rela- 
tions which these persons bore to the history we have in hand. 
It is a fact, that this Samuel Houston, a man who had 
made himself conspicuous as a friend of General Jackson 
prior to the election of 1828, who had been a representative 
from Tennessee in Congress, as well as Governor of that 
State, and who boasted much of his possessing the confidence 
of the President, suddenly left Washington, but not without 
leaving behind him some who knew of his intended course, 
and that he made his appearance in Texas as an expatriated 
citizen, anxious to leave his own country in order that he 
might take the benefit of the advantages held out by the su- 
perior moral and social condition of Mexico, by becoming a 
settler under its jurisdiction. His example was soon followed 
by many of those who boast of belonging to the freest nation 
under the sun. Mexico was indiscreet enough to suppose 
that they came in earnest. No efibrt was made, by those 
who knew better, to undeceive her, and she therefore was 
lavish in her offers of land and all other privileges. But she 
would not grant every conceivable demand. The Mexican 
constitution by which the territories of Coahuila and Texas 
were united abolished slavery. The new settlers insisted upon 
separating Texas from Coahuila, and making a new constitu- 
tion for the former, which omitted the clause abolishing slave- 
ry. Mexico preferred the old form of government, and the 
settlers deemed the moment auspicious for declaring their in- 
dependence. And General Houston, not long afterwards, 
wrote to his friend Dunlap of Tennessee, for aid in the strug- 
gle that would ensue, because, to use his own words — 

There is but one feeling in Texas, in my opinion, and that is, to estab- 
lish the independence of Texas, a?id to be attached to the United States. 

We make no comment on these facts, because we are con- 
fident that with all reasonable and fair-judging citizens they 



17 

need none. The independence of Texas was established 
principahy by means of aid from the United States. And 
now that the proposal to be attached is once more made, Mr. 
Senator Walker, in his elaborate pamphlet, professes to see 
no difference between the nature of this proposal, as it affects 
the disposition towards us of Mexico, which has never yet 
acknowledged the independence of Texas, and that made 
during Mr. Adams's administration, to obtain by purchase the 
territory from Mexico herself, before her independence had 
been acknowledged by Spain. He maintains that Spain, with 
whom we were then on friendly terms, had as much right to be 
offended with us in the one case, as Mexico has in the other. 
This is specious and plausible, but it is as unsound as every 
other part of the argument in favor of annexation ; — for sure- 
ly there is a moral feeling in the breast of every man, which 
leads him to distinguish between actions done under wholly 
different circumstances. Mexico declared herself indepen- 
dent of Spain. The struggle was between Mexicans and 
Spaniards, and the United States did not interfere to decide 
it. On the other hand, the citizens of the United States went 
into Texas ostensibly as settlers, and they declared Texas 
independent of Mexico. Can it be said that the United 
States did not create as well as decide the struggle ? Can it be 
said that the government was not during the whole lime anx- 
iously betraying its interest in the result, by perpetual solicita- 
tion of Mexico to cede the country as it was, whether in a state 
of insurrection or not ? Does not the law forbid individuals to 
take advantage of their own wrong ? And is it not the wrong 
of our citizens, transplanted for a short time to another soil, 
which has enabled us to treat with them for that soil, against 
the consent and to the injury of Mexico ? So long as Spain 
was unable to recover any territory from the Mexicans, it 
could be matter of no offence who purchased the soil of the 
new owners. But the Mexicans certainly have a right to be 
offended, if the government with whom it is at peace, first 
succeeds in tearing off a part of their country, by instigating 
resistance to their authority on the part of its citizens import- 
ed for the purpose, and then, after a few years have passed 
just sufficient to save appearances, it takes through the agency 
of those citizens that country very quietly within its own ju- 
risdiction, as the legitimate offspring of this treachery. 

The Mexicans may be a feeble people, wanting in the en- 
ergy which is characteristic of the United States, but ihey are 
not wanting in discernment. They long since penetrated the 
ambitious designs of their powerful neighbor, and they have 
not been without industry in watching and exposing its action 



18 

to the eyes of the civilized world. From the day of the ac- 
cession of General Jackson to the Presidency, to the last of 
his second term, no effort was left untried by him, by which he 
could hope to acquire Texas. In the summer of 1829, Mr. 
Anthony Butler, the person who was to be employed by him 
as his negotiator, came to Washington, and had long confer- 
ences with him, and with Mr. Van Buren, that he might 
be the more fully master of all the designs of the administra- 
tion. In 1830, General Jackson's own affidavit on record in 
the Court at Washington proves that he became fully aware 
of General Houston's schemes, but that instead of communi- 
cating his information to the government with which we were 
at peace, and which was most deeply affected by them, he 
confined himself to a letter of inquiry, addressed, not to the 
Governor, but to the Secretary of the Territory of Arkansas, 
and calculated rather to invite a contradiction of the designs 
charged, than to elicit any facts. It should be recollected, 
that this was at just about the same time that the singular 
article already quoted, intimating, as from a source entitled 
to " the highest credit," that Texas might "throw off the 
yoke of allegiance to Mexico" — appeared in the columns of 
the State Gazette of this very Arkansas Territory. And not 
satisfied with the ordinary forms of official intercourse, Gen- 
eral .lackson himself, notwithstanding the position he occupied 
which seems to require no little delicacy in the management 
of the foreign relations, kept up a constant interchange of 
private and confidential letters with Mr. Butler, the perpet- 
ually recurring burden of which, if we are to judge by the re- 
plies of that gentleman, was Texas, Texas. 

Mr. Tyler has been much blamed for carrying on a secret 
negotiation with Texas. We have no disposition to volun- 
teer any palliation of his measures ; but, we ask, what censure 
should his conduct bear in this instance, in comparison with 
that of his more distinguished predecessor ? He has, to be sure 
tried to betray the Union, by a sudden stroke of policy, into a 
measure which he knew a large part of it held in great detest- 
ation, and deemed subversive of the Constitution. But Gen- 
eral Jackson continued secretly at work during eight long 
years, coaxing, threatening, proposing treaties never to be 
executed, harping upon private claims, bad as well as good, 
for the sake of obtaining a denial of them that would make 
cause of quarrel, endeavoring to raise the most frivolous 
doubts, in order to unsettle the clear boundary of the Sabine, 
and only stopping short at the deliberate proposal by Mr. 
Butler, of carrying every th'm^hy doivnright bribery and cor- 
ruption. 



19 

These facts are all substantiated even by the partial evi- 
dence (made so it should be observed, through the suppress- 
ions of the administration of Mr. Van Buren) which has been 
furnished in answer to a call of the House of Representatives 
at Washington. Yet they have never excited the public at- 
tention in a degree at all to correspond to the importance of 
the disclosures which they make. Most of the people believe 
very sincerely that this alarm about Texas is a most vision- 
ary fear — that no one has ever been in earnest in pressing the 
point, and that it is rather to be regarded as a device of vio- 
lent abolitionists to injure the character of our public men than 
as having any foundation in truth and their own conduct. Lit- 
tle are they aware that the whole force of the administration 
under a most energetic President is proved by papers which 
defy contradiction to have been secretly exerted to bring about 
a cession of this territory voluntarily by Mexico, at the same 
time that it was instigating revolutionary movements on the 
part of persons leagued in the conspiracy within the limits of 
that territory itself, persons who left the United States for the 
purpose, in order to bring about by the use of force, the 
same result. 

The negotiation with Mexico finally failed. Mr. Butler 
could not succeed in effecting as much as he had promised to 
do and as a consequence he was obliged to retire from the 
scene. But it was not until after he had spent months in the 
territory of Texas itself and months more in Washington which 
were employed in arranging the details of the last act of trea- 
chery to a friendly nation. A final proposition was made to 
the government of Mexico to take all of the territory east of 
the Rio del Norte, up to the thirty-seventh parallel of latitude, 
and from thence west to the Pacific Ocean. This would have 
included a great part of upper California, New Mexico and 
Santa Fe — and for this immense territory the sum of six mil- 
lions of dollars was offered. And upon the rejection of this 
proposal Mr. Butler retired from his mission only for the pur- 
pose of ultimately taking up the thread of operations in Tex- 
as itself, and organizing more effectively by means of secret 
societies the other part of the plan which had been agreed 
upon. 

We have already remarked, that there are many ways in 
America to arrive at the same result. If one fails, another 
will be tried. The truth of this is visible enough throughout 
all the proceedings about Texas. General Samuel Houston 
the gentleman who had devised this scheme at Washington, 
about which President Jackson thought it proper to send 
all the way to the Secretary of State of the Territory of 



20 

Arkansas to inquire, had not been idle during the time that 
these negotiations were going on. He became a settler in 
Texas, very soon worked himself up into a discontented 
citizen, and finally became the head of an insurrectionary 
force. The quarrel came to an issue not long after Mr. But- 
ler had surrendered all hope from negotiation. And when 
it seemed by no means unlikely, that General Santa Anna, 
who was advancing with a military force from Mexico, 
would be able to stifle the revolt at once, the government 
at Washington, and General Jackson, by a subsequent let- 
ter, under his own signature, authorised and directed Gen- 
eral Gaines to advance into the territory of Texas, and re- 
main there, under the pretence that the boundary was still 
unsettled and that the presence of a United States force was 
necessary to secure it against Indian hostility. 

It appears that from the period of the recall of Mr. Butler 
from Mexico, and the breaking out of the struggle in Texas, 
which events were nearly cotemporaneous, the policy of the 
administration took a new turn. It was no longer necessary 
for the government of the United States to coax Mexico to 
a voluntary cession of a territory which was now in a state of 
hopeful rebellion. The more advisable course seemed to be 
to give as much aid and countenance to the insurrection as 
was consistent with our professedly neutral position, not 
merely by securing the presence of the United States troops 
in the theatre of the war, but also by trying to pick a quarrel 
with Mexico on a new and separate account of our own. 
Whilst on the one hand General Jackson announced by a 
message to Congress, on the 22d December, that under all 
the circumstances attending the contest in Texas, it was un- 
advi::;ble at that time to acknowledge the independence of 
that country ; on the other hand he equally announced, six 
weeks afterwards, that no peaceful adjustment of certain mat- 
ters in controversy between the United States and Mexico 
could be expected, that was not sustained by war measures, 
and the granting of authority to make reprisals upon her com- 
merce. The decisive battle of San Jacinto had been fought, 
and General Santa Anna who had been made prisoner to the 
Texans, was sent to Washington to experience the double 
satisfaction of a war threat from the United States on one 
side, and of a sense of his personal danger from his victors on 
the other, if he did not use all his influence to bring about the 
grand desideratum, the annexation of Texas to the United 
States. He appears to have been willing to concede all that 
was required of him under this state of duresse. The conse- 
quence was immediately perceptible. Notwithstanding and 



21 

in spite of the message of the 22d of December, dissuading 
the acknowledgment of Texan Independence for many 
strong reasons therein given, an amendment was suddenly en- 
grafted upon the annual appropriation bill, in one of its last 
stages in the House of Representatives, three or four days 
prior to the third of March, 1837, which amendment provid- 
ed for the pay of a diplomatic agent to the republic of Texas, 
as soon as the President should receive satisfactory evidence 
that Texas was an independent power. The Senate con- 
sented. Almost, perhaps quite in the selfsame hour that the 
President signed the appropriation bill, he also obtained such 
evidence of the independence of Texas as to induce him 
forthwith, and before the expiration of the remaining minutes 
of his power as President, to nominate the diplomatic agent 
provided for in the bill. This was one of his very last offi- 
cial acts. If his policy had not been successful in acquiring 
to the United States this territory, he at any rate had the 
consolation to reflect that he had wrested it from Mexico, in 
payment for her obstinacy, in refusing to sell it when she was 
required so to do. 

After such an act as this, who is there that ought to won- 
der at the attempt of Mr. Tyler, to steal a march upon the 
country with a treaty ? Yet the lapse of less than seven 
years has had the effect of so far sinking the old proceeding 
into obhvion throughout the Northern States, that people ac- 
tually seem to regard this new one as something entirely un- 
precedented. Nothing wakes them up but the clap of thun- 
der which comes after the lightning has done all the damage 
possible. The two great parties are so afraid of doing or 
saying any thing which shall appear in the least to justify the 
organization of the third or abolition party, that they have 
united in striving to forget as far as possible that there are any 
questions at all which must grow out of the existence of slavery. 
Had they met those questions as they ought in the outset, it 
is not too much to say that there would not now have been 
any third party worth considering. It is not the mere mo- 
mentary outbreak against a measure upon the eve of accom- 
plishment, preceded by a cold and studied incredulity of its 
existence until it becomes evident beyond the possibility of 
contradiction, that will ever go far to counteract a systematic 
policy managed by persons occupying stations of power un- 
der the general government, or that will satisfy the just clamor 
of an irritated community after the time shall have passed 
when action might have been properly directed. 

And now that we can look back upon the history of this 
business, we think that one thing will be most particularly 



22 

striking to our observation. And that is, the change of re- 
lation which the United States bears to the territory of Texas 
at the present time from that which they bore in 1825, when 
the negotiations commenced. For then it was a simple pro- 
ceeding unclouded by any suspicion of sinister design. Even 
the blight of domestic slavery had not in any great degree 
fallen upon the land. But now we know the fact that slavery 
was introduced by the immigrants from these States in oppo- 
sition to the law of Mexico. That it constituted the turn- 
ing point in the revolution of the Texans, and that it is the 
cause in behalf of which the whole power of our government 
has been exerted directly or indirectly as well in the negotia- 
tion that has taken place as in the subsequent operations of 
the settlers themselves. What is it then that the United 
States are called upon to sanction by now acquiring Texas ? 
Is it not the entire process by which we have converted a 
free into a Slave State, and extended the influence of the 
domestic institution at the cost of every principle of fair 
dealing and of right. And is this not a wholly new feature 
since the year 1825 which completely alters the nature of 
the transaction, and converts an honest and open offer to 
purchase into a sharper's contrivance to acquire property in 
an underhand way, for an unjustifiable purpose .'' 

There was very much such a burst of popular feeling in 1837 
as has lately taken place against the measure. The Legisla- 
tures of Ohio, Massachusetts and Rhode Island passed resolu- 
tions which had then some effect in checking its prosecution. 
Yet had General Jackson remained at the head of the govern- 
ment, we have very little doubt that it would have been exe- 
cuted. But the policy of his wary successor was too cautious 
to ni<ike him willing to risk beginning his administration with a 
war and a completely disordered state of the finances at the 
same time. On the 4lh of August, 1837, Mr. Memucan Hunt, 
specially appointed by Texas for the purpose, opened a nego- 
tiation with the Secretary of State, Mr. Forsyth, by proposing 
"to unite the two people under one and the same government." 
The first condition prescribed by his government was " the 
free and unmolested authority over their slave population." 
This, it will be recollected, was about one month before 
the time at which the Congress of the United States had 
been called to meet by proclamation of Mr. Van Buren, on 
account of the suspension of specie payments by the banks 
throughout the Union. It was quite enough for the adminis- 
tration to be obliged to face an active and powerful opposition 
on the subject of the currency, without adding the plentiful 
materials to be gathered from the prospect of a war with a 



23 

neighboring power. Mexico had protested against the recog- 
nition of Texan Independence, carried through, as it had 
been, in the manner already described ; but she had also of- 
fered to remove all reasonable grounds of complaint on the 
score upon which General Jackson had endeavored to press 
the two countries into war — the claims for indemnity to pri- 
vate citizens. No other pretext, therefore, remained to save 
the United States from the odium of incurring the war to jus- 
tify its own wrong done in Texas. Mr. Van Buren did not 
feel himself seated firmly enough to encounter the fury of 
such a tempest as this would excite. He directed Mr. 
Forsyth to decline the offer of the Texan government, made 
through Mr. Hunt. And in his refusal he distinctly assigned 
as the reason, that the Mexican government might consider 
such an act as tantamount to a declaration of war. Even 
Mr. Senator Walker, in his pamphlet, is obliged to confess, 
which he does with singular disinterestedness, considering 
that he is and has been the " Magnus Apollo" of the Tex- 
ans, that "in 1837, within a few weeks or months succeed- 
ing our recognition of the independence of Texas, and be- 
fore her recognition by any foreign powers, it (that is the an- 
nexation by treaty) might have subjected us to unjust impu- 
tations, and therefore it might have been deemed inexpedient 
under such a time and under such circumstances.^^ The 
italic letters belong to Mr. Walker, and not to us, and we 
agree with him in every thing affirmed or implied in the sen- 
tence, excepting in the statement that the "imputations" to 
which we should have subjected ourselves would have been 
" unjust." 

What Mr. Van Buren would have done under other cir- 
cumstances, or what he will do if he should again get into 
power, we shall not undertake to pronounce. We judge no 
man excepting by his acts, and under the same rule, we are 
willing to give him all the credit which his conduct in this in- 
stance deserves. At the same time, judging him by all of his 
acts taken together, we must confess that we have no confi- 
dence in his discovering any obstacles to this treaty of annex- 
ation which the people do not themselves most distinctly fur- 
nish to his vision. 

Let us now return to Mr. Senator Walker, who appears to 
think that the difficulties in the way of reannexation, as he is al- 
ways pleased to call it, which existed in 1837, are now re- 
moved. " But now," he says in his pamphlet, " when seven 
years have elapsed since our recognition of the independence 
of Texas ; and she has been recognised for many years as an 
independent power by the great nations of Europe, and her 



24 

sovereignty fully established, and fully acknowledged, there can 
be no objection to such a treaty at this period." From all 
which we can only gather that this gentleman thinks Mexico 
is now barred of her claim by a sort of statute of limitations 
interpolated into the law of nations like that which runs against 
the recovery of small debts with us. But with all due defer- 
ence to the gentleman, it is not exactly what ive think in this 
case, that should be our guide, but what the world will think 
and justly think, too. Does the delay of seven years alter in 
any respect the nature of one of those peculiar ^^circum- 
stances''^ to which Mr. Walker so significantly alludes as mak- 
ing the act inexpedient in 1S37 ? Does it in the least mod- 
ify the objections of Mexico to the measure ? We have the 
best reason to know that it does not. For the Mexican gov- 
ernment and the Mexican Minister, General Almonte, more 
keen-sighted than most of our news-mongers in Washington, 
appear to have got a scent of the negotiation proposed by 
Mr. Tyler as early as in August last. 

On the 23d of that month, Mr. de Boccanegra, the For- 
eign Secretary of Mexico, addressed a note to Mr. Waddy 
Thompson, the Minister of the United States, in which he 
in quite a spirit of foresight, alluded to the fact that a " propo- 
sition would be submitted to the deliberation of the Congress 
of the United States" at the present session, " to incorporate 
with them, the so-called republic of Texas," and he went on 
further to request Mr. Thompson to announce to his govern- 
ment that Mexico would consider the adoption of such an act 
equivalent to a declaration of war, "leaving" as he says, "to 
the civilized world to determine with regard to the justice of 
the cause of the Mexican nation in a struggle which it has 
becix so far from provoking." Not content with this notice, 
General Almonte, the Mexican Minister at Washington, 
wrote on the third of November a letter to the Secretary of 
State, Mr. Upshur, in which he says that this annexation, 
" if carried into effect, cannot be considered by Mexico in 
any other aspect than as a direct aggression." " He more- 
over declares, by express order of his government, that on 
sanction being given by the Executive of ihe Union to the 
incorporation of Texas into the United States, he will con- 
sider his mission ended ; seeing that, as the Secretary of 
State will have learned, the Mexican government is resolved 
to declare war so soon as it receives information of such an 
act." This is surely plain spoken enough. Mr. Upshur, to 
be sure, took the matter up in a very high strain, and affect- 
ing to consider his country insulted by an imputation which if 
not merited would scarcely have required notice, he evaded 



25 

answering the material question entirely. But there is reason 
to believe that this letter was not without its effect in bring- 
ing about a modification of the course of tlie President, so far 
as to make tha:t a secret and clandestine transaction, which 
was designed to have been announced in his message to Con- 
gress, at the commencement of the session. 

Another of Mr. Walker's reasons why the case is not now 
the same that it was in 1837, is, that the independence of 
Texas "is now recognized by the great nations of Europe, 
and her sovereignty fully established and fully acknowledg- 
ed," which it was not at that time. The argument, then, 
is something of this sort : — Texas was not quite assured of 
her independence in 1837, and therefore, considering her pe- 
culiar circumstances, it was not advisable for us to lake her 
under our protection at that time, when she most needed it. 
But now that she is well established, independent, and has the 
support of foreign nations, is just the moment for her to 
cease to be so, for the sake of joining us. Surely, if Texas 
be now able to go on alone, countenanced as she is by the 
great powers of Europe, there are many reasons why the 
United States should join to sustain her in that policy instead 
of tempting her to adopting an opposite one. One of the 
strongest is, that it would be the means of completely avoid- 
ing the imputation of any such motives or unworthy designs 
as Mr. Upshur immediately perceived in General Almonte's 
letter ; probably because his own conscience was the moni- 
tor that made him watch for them there. There will not 
be any question hereafter made of the disinterestedness of 
the United States, if time shall show that they have in no 
way gained what seems a benefit to themselves by the seces- 
sion of Texas from Mexico. Surely, if we consider many 
portions of the policy of the government as it has been at- 
tempted very faintly to delineate it in these papers, the good 
faith of the cotmtry stands in great need of some such ultimate 
justification as this in the eyes of the world. Surely, nothing 
would at this moment go farther to save our history from one 
of its most unfortunate pages than a determination now made 
to be friendly to Texas, exactly as we are friendly to every 
other nation of the globe. 

Unfortunately, however, for him the end of Mr. Walker's 
pamphlet contradicts the beginning. This country of Texas, 
whose independence " is now so fully recognized by the 
great nations of Europe, and her sovereignty so fully estab- 
lished" on the seventh page turns out on the nineteenth and 
twentieth pages to be " a power too feeble to guard her rights 
as a neutral power." " The flag of England will soon float 



26 

over it as a British province, carved out of the dismembered 
valley of the West." " But even if not a dependency or a 
colony, England, as she always heretofore has done in the 
case of neutrals, would seize upon her soil, her coast, her 
harbors, her rivers, and our and her Indians, in her invasion 
of the valley of the West ; and the only certain measure of 
defence and protection is the re-annexation of Texas." Such 
is the statement of the condition of Texas, when it suits Mr. 
Walker to consider her as not so well established, nor her in- 
dependence so fully recognized. Her condition is, then, not 
yet much changed from what it was in 1837. If this be 
granted, then have the Mexicans reasonable ground for hope 
that they may yet get back their territory, provided that we 
do not commit a hostile act by taking possession of it our- 
selves, in the name and on the application of the insurgents. 
In which case, we clearly break our treaty with a power with 
which we are at peace, for the sake of an acquisition of ter- 
ritory ; or in other words, the "circumstances" which Mr. 
W^alker speaks nf as forbidding the act in 1837, remain in 
statu quo in 1844. In our humble opinion, there is no get- 
ting away from this dilemma. Either Texas can maintain 
her independence or she cannot. If she can, then would it 
be perfectly safe, and very creditable to the Union, to sus- 
tain her independent attitude. If she cannot, then Mexico 
has a right to complain of our hostility if we take from her the 
chance of recovering her territory. 

We have now gone through with the most material part of 
the history of our relations with Texas and Mexico, and we 
confidently challenge any impartial person to review it, and 
then deny that there is a broad difference observable between 
the '^arly and late policy of the government on this subject. 
The administration of Mr. Adams sought to acquire the /onrf, 
free from any and every incumbrance with which it is now 
loaded, in a fair, open, and honorable manner. That of his 
successor stimulated the p(;ople of the United States to go 
and take possession of it under the cloak of amity, and then, 
by every artifice, endeavored to wrest from the hands of a 
nation, with which we professed to be at peace, the territory 
which they obstinately refused to cede of their own accord. 
One of the most striking features of this new policy, was the 
establishment of the institution of domestic slavery, directly in 
the face of the Mexican authority. This was the common 
bond designed to keep the insurgents steady to the interests 
of the United States. It is the bond which now holds them 
to the policy of annexation. The rumor about their seeking 
the protection of Great Britain, is only designed to catch such 



27 

simpletons in the Free States as are predisposed to believe 
any thing that may be told them. They seek the protection of 
a power, which knocks the manacles off from every slave with- 
in the scope of its influence! T/icj/ voluntarily seek to sacri- 
fice a property in man, to defend and sustain which, they un- 
dertook the insurrection against the Mexican power ! The 
idea is amusing, to those who have watched with attention the 
desperation with which the same men, when citizens of the 
United States, and their friends, have always contended for 
that property. Sooner than that this should take place, the 
whole of the company immigrating into Texas, would vacate 
the lands of that territory, and return to these favored regions, 
where slavery and the constitution are said to flourish togeth- 
er and where it is treason to doubt the propriety of continuing 
special privileges, which have the efiect of encouraging the 
increase of the slave population. When will the free citizens, 
who love our institutions, cease to be led blindfold into the 
snares which are so unblushingly prepared for them ? 

When Mr. Walker, acting in concurrence with General 
Jackson, succeeded in obtaining the recognition, by the Unit- 
ed States, of the independence of Texas, in the manner 
which has been already explained, he probably congratulated 
himself upon the measure, considering it as one step nearer to 
the great object of his wisJies. He did not then foresee 
the rise of a new objection to it, growing out of ihe very 
change thus effected in the relation of that country to ours. 
He did not perceive that the admission of Texas as an inde- 
pendent foreign State was an unprecedented act of power in 
the general government not sanctioned by the examples either 
of Louisiana or the Florida treaties. 

This objection is now very gravely urged in many quarters, 
and, we must confess, we see no way to remove it, consist- 
ently with the slightest respect to the Constitution, which the 
members of Congress are all sworn to support. Although 
the acquisition of territory under the treaties referred to was 
a very questionable proceeding, when judged by the naked 
provisions of the constitution, still, as the people sanctioned 
the act by their silence, we shall not now undertake, so far as 
that goes, to review the decision. What Mr. Jefferson, the 
person under whose administration the cession of Louisiana 
took place, thought of the matter, is very well known. In 
his letter to Wilson Carey Nicholas, he says — " But when I 
consider that the limits of the United States are precisely fix- 
ed by the treaty of 1783, that the constitution expressly de- 
clares itself to be made for the United States, 1 cannot help 
behaving the intention was not to permit Congress to admit 



28 

into the Union new States, which should be formed out" (that 
is, beyond the hmits) "of ihe territory for which, and under 
whose authority alone, they were then acting. I do not be- 
lieve it was meant that they might receive England, Ireland, 
Holland, &c., into it, which would be the case on your con- 
struction. When an instrument admits two constructions — 
the one safe, the other dangerous — the one precise, the other 
indefinite — I prefer that which is safe and precise. I had 
rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it 
is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which 
would make our powers boundless. Our peculiar security is 
is in the possession of a written constitution. Let us not 
make it a blank paper by construction.''^ 

This is strong reasoning, but we have long been aware of 
the fact, that much as the citizens of the Southern States 
profess to revere the memory of Mr. Jeflerson, and to follow 
his doctrines, they seldom respect them in practice, further 
than as they happen to coincide with the immediate policy 
which they have in view. Doubtful as Mr. Jefi'erson was of 
his power, the cession of Louisiana, nevertheless, took place- 
It was, however, but the cession of a territory by a govern- 
ment of the old, to one in the new world ; ii did not involve 
the question whether one government itself could cede itself, 
or another accept of such a cession. The United States as- 
sumed the territorial rights, subject to no existing political 
conditions, on the part of the small number of people who 
occupied the lands. They agreed to incorporate them into 
the Union whenever they should become numerous enough to 
organize a State ; but in the interval they assumed to them- 
selves the unlimited right of regulating the government, and 
pai celling out for sale the unoccupied lands. The population 
that has been since admitted into the Union, was thus, in a 
great degree, drawn from the original States, by the induce- 
ments presented in the new lands, and the prospect of a con- 
tinuance in the enjoyment of all the privileges of citizenship. 
It had nevei- voluntarily expatriated itself. It had never un- 
dertaken, by virtue of such expatriation, to exercise indepen- 
dent powers of government unknov\n to our laws, nor had it 
ever ceased to be amenable to our authority. 

The case of Texas is of a very different kind. Texas 
claims to be an independent sovereignty ; the United States 
admit that she is one. She applies to be admitted to the 
Union ; she does not propose to cede territory merely. She 
proposes to come in at once, and to exercise such rights of 
citizenship as she shall beforehand insist upon securing to her- 
self, by conditions to be agreed upon. The United States, 



29 

on the other hand, must assume new habilities, and acknowl- 
edge a new set of authorhies. They must acknowledge the 
vaHdity of an act done by officers of another parly, to a treaty 
which either makes them of equal authority with their own, or 
which, at one blow, destroys all the authority which they 
possess to do the act. There can be no medium. In this 
connexion it has been rather humorously asked by some, who 
would be the President of the country, after a treaty had been 
made joining Texas and the United States, supposing that 
such an act were constitutional. Would it be .John 'J'yler, 
or Samuel Houston, either, or both together ? The question, 
odd as it may appear, contains the gist of the whole matter. 
Can a government by a treaty consent to annihilate itself } 
Then where is the binding force of the treaty, after it is 
made ? But, if it does not annihilate itself, it enters into the 
treaty on equal terms with the government with which it 
treats ? In this instance, Texas would treat as a State, not 
with the separate States, as such, but with the United States. 
She is able then to assume a position, and to dictate terms 
towards us, such as no other of the States since the Decla- 
ration of Independence could have done. It is not necessary 
that such a treaty should compel her to recognise the consti- 
tution. Her position in the Union would then be secured by 
that treaty, whilst that of the other States would rest upon 
the constitution. If, then, the people of Texas were to take 
it into their heads to violate the conditions of the constitution, 
whilst they adhere to their treaty, what would be the mode 
of redress ? Or, on the other hand, if they broke the treaty, 
who would conduct the negotiations that must follow, and when 
would a resort to war be justifiable ? 

But the authorities of Texas may consent for the purpose 
of gaining an admission to resort to a new expedient to avoid 
the force of this objection. They may consent to disfran- 
chise themselves, and to become simply a territory of the 
United States. Indeed it has been intimated that such has 
been the shape in which the treaty has placed the subject. 
Yet one moment's consideration will serve to show that this 
is only an evasion, and does not remove the difficulty. We 
have acknowledged Texas as an independent State. Is it 
competent for us at any moment, by virtue of a treaty to de- 
ny our words and to declare in the very act to which she is a 
party that she is no Slate at all .'' If a territory, she either 
has a government or she has not. If she has, then our objec- 
tion is not removed. If she has not, and is without a govern- 
ment, why has not Mexico all the rights to rule over her which 
she once had, and which she never has renounced. A confes- 



30 

slon that she must receive a form of government from a 
neighboring State surely makes our wrong the greater in sub- 
stituting ourselves as the sovereign in lieu of the rightful one. 
How can a government cede a territory by a treaty without 
possessing the powers to carry that treaty into execution ? 
But this very treaty denies to the government such powers be- 
cause it annihilates it at the very moment that it should begin 
to exercise them. Such an anomaly was never before heard 
of in political history. We can recollect examples of States 
acquired by conquest, and by negotiation, but we do not re- 
member one which resolved itself by its own act into its orig- 
inal element, the territory upon which it is founded. 

Let us put the case in still another light. If the govern- 
ment of the United States can treat with Texas respecting a 
union of the two countries, in any shape whatever it may 
please to put it, it is equally able to treat with any other na- 
tion under the sun. Supposing, then, that in the heat of a 
revolution like that of France, before the period of its wild 
excesses, the national assembly of that or any other Euro- 
pean people should send over ambassadors to the United 
States, to treat respecting a union of the two countries. Sup- 
posing that a President should be found ready to negotiate with 
them, and a Legislature, one or both branches, prepared to 
sanction a treaty thus made. Supposing that one of the 
conditions should be the transfer of the seat of government of 
the two countries to some common centre, somewhere on an 
island, if such could be found, situated half-way between 
them. Supposing that John Tyler, like Samuel Houston, 
should consent to have his power annihilated, and a French 
President over the two countries set over his head. Would 
it ther. be pretended by any human being that either the Pre- 
sident or Congress would have been exercising powers grant- 
ed under the constitution ? Yet it would be difficult to deny 
that each of these powers is in the constitution, if it be once 
granted tliat Texas can be admitted by treaty. It may be 
objected to us, that we are putting an extreme case. But in 
this instance an extreme case is only necessary to show, in a 
still more glaring light, the character of a constitutional doc- 
trine. If the President and Congress can treat with a for- 
eign power in such a manner as to disturb all the existing re- 
lations between the States, by the introduction of that for- 
eign power into the government without the consent of the 
people of those States, then, as Mr. Jefferson most truly 
observes, in another passage of the letter already quoted, 
" We have no constitution." Any thing and every thing 
may be done, which the caprice, or the ambition, or the 



31 

spirit of intrigue of a few men in Washington may prompt 
them to do, under the form of a solemn treaty. 

It is, then, obvious that there is a broad line of distinction 
marked out, between the cession by a government of an in- 
dependent State of a part of its territory not having a govern- 
ment, to the United States, by a treaty, and the formation of 
a new social compact between the people living under two 
distinct forms of government, by the force of such an in- 
strument. In the former class may be ranked the Louisiana 
and Florida treaties, and the late treaty of Washington, 
of which Mr. Walker tries to make use as a precedent. 
Under the latter class must be ranked every project of a 
treaty like the one proposed to be made with Texas. Whilst 
it may be a fair question whether treaties of the former kind 
may not be made, so long as they only have the eflect of en- 
larging the territory of the Union, it seems to us that not the 
shadow of a doubt can be thrown upon our position respecting 
the latter. A treaty of this kind seems to us at war with 
every theory of republicanism which has been ever acknowl- 
edged in America. It is imposing upon the people of the 
States new conditions, without their consent or privity. It 
is, in point of fact, a revolution. After such an event, the 
constitution of the United States no longer can be regarded 
as the rule of action, but the President, by virtue of his pat- 
ronage and the treaty-making power, becomes a more abso- 
lute sovereign than half of the monarchs of Europe. 

So obvious and palpable is the stretch of power which this 
doctrine of annexing a foreign country, by the mere force of a 
treaty, assumes for the general government, that it is wonder- 
ful it should ever have found a single advocate among those 
who have always professed a wish to restrain its tendencies 
to consolidation by all possible means. They who object to 
duties for the protection of home manufactures, or to a na- 
tional bank, from constitutional scruples, and yet concede 
this great power, do indeed strain at a gnat and swallow a 
camel. Yet, if we inquire into the reason which prompts to 
such very opposite views of the powers of the general gov- 
ernment in the same men, we must come back to the ground 
of the Massachusetts resolutions. Whatever road we may 
take in public affairs, whatever question we may propose, they 
all terminate in the same point. The maintenance of the 
property representation is the pole star by which the course 
of the ship of state is steered. Is it necessary to deny the 
existence of a power in the constitution ? It is, because it is 
feared that an unequal benefit may be derived from its use by 
the Free States. Is it necessary, on the contrary, to strain 



that instrument beyond all reasonable limits ? It is, because 
the benefit is all to accrue to the small number who wish to 
hold a perpetuity of property in man, and through that the 
control which they have acquired over the affairs of the 
Union. 

These are solemn truths. They are not told for the sake 
of exciting discontent at our existing institutions, but for the 
sake of rousing the people, as far as possible, to maintain 
them inviolate. Is it possible, that this great republic should 
suffer itself long to be led by such blind guides, as the advo- 
cates of slavery, or their allies among the political managers 
of the Free States ? We cannot yet believe that it is. Let 
slavery remain a local matter within the limits of those States 
in which it is established, and we know of nothing to create 
cause of uneasiness. But wdien it threatens to raise its fear- 
ful head over the whole land, when it bends the policy of the 
government to subserve its own selfish purposes, when it un- 
dertakes completely to alter the relations between the States, 
established by their frame of government, and to overawe the 
spirit of liberty, then is the time to cry aloud, and spare not. 
There must be some favorable change in a few years, or else 
the great objects for which the constitution was adopted, will 
disappear from sight, and it will cease to be the pride and the 
boast of all intelligent Americans. 

Mr. Walker, whose pamphlet is understood to be the text- 
book of the friends of the annexation of Texas, maintains that 
there are three ways of arriving at his object in a constitu- 
tional manner. The first is by virtue of the treaty-making 
power. This has already been considered. The second is, 
by force of the first clause of the third section of the fourth 
article, which is in these words : — 

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union ; but no 
new Slate sliall be formed or erected within tlie jurisdiction of any other 
State, nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or 
parts of States, without the consent of the Legislatures of the States, as 
well as of the Congress. 

Mr. Walker maintains that this is an unlimited grant of pow- 
er to the Congress. Hence that a simple act of the Legisla- 
ture, passed by a bare majority in each branch, is all that is ne- 
cessary to admit a foreign State, no matter what, — Mexico, 
Russia, or even the Celestial Empire, on the other side of the 
globe, into the Union. 

This construction, coming, as it does, from a gentleman 
who could not see in the same instrument from which he de- 
rives this power, a sufficient authority to incorporate a nation- 



33 

al bank, is certainly calculated to amaze reasonable observers 
of political aflairs. There are persons, even in the free 
States, who cannot perceive the inconsistency involved in 
supporting these two propositions, under any single theory 
that has ever yet been maintained of our federal system. 
Neither are they immediately aware of the singular use now 
for the first time made of a provision of the constitution, ori- 
ginally incorporated into it for a very different purpose. 
One of the modes by which the gentlemen who represent 
property in man succeed in pushing their system into opera- 
tion is, through the bold manner in which they advance their 
propositions. We have heard persons doubt whether a 
good answer could be made to this, at the same time that 
they had no belief whatever in its soundness. Such things 
make us fear sometimes that the spirit of our institutions has 
already evaporated under the scorching influences of slavery, 
and nothing is left to us but the residuum of forms. Let us 
look at the subject calmly for a moment, and see whether 
there is one atom of foundation for any of these judgements. 
The provision of the constitution is, that '■'■new States may 
be admitted by Congress into this Union." Does Mr. 
Walker mean, under this clause, to insist that old States shall 
also be included ? A State, according to the best authori- 
ties, is defined to be a Republic or Commonwealth. In or- 
der to the full compi'ehension of the phrase "New States," 
we must therefore infer that some other communities were in- 
tended than those in whicli the forms of government had been 
long established. This inference is proved to be perfectly 
just, by the very next sentence, which makes certain restric- 
tions to the power already granted in that preceding, all of 
which have reference to the fact that the States proposed to 
be admitted are new, that is, just constituted. " But no neto 
State," ir says, "shall he formed or erected within the juris- 
diction of any other State, nor any State be formed by the 
junction of two or more States or parts of States without 
the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned, as 
well as of the Congress." It is, then, to the formation or erec- 
tion of new States that the whole paragraph applies — to the 
creation of new social communities, and not to the recogni- 
tion of old ones. It was designed to provide for the incor- 
poration of those societies which were to rise up in the for- 
ests of the West, on the territories originally comprised with- 
in the charters of certain colonies, but ceded by them to the 
United States before the adoption of the constitution, and not 
for the indefinite recognition of every foreign government at 
the mere will of the Congress, whenever it should please 



34 

such a government to be called one of the United States. 
The words of the article can bear no other construction with- 
out positive violence to their meaning. The spirit of the 
"vthole instrument is still more adverse to Mr. Walker's idea, 
for! it breathes throughout a government of limited powers for 
thei perpetuation of the blessings of liberty to the people who 
adopted it and to their posterity. But what limit can be set 
to the powers granted to the Congress, if it once be granted 
that the act of a bare majority can at any time introduce new 
elements into the social system, the character of which the 
people of the States can as little regulate as they can foresee .'' 
Luckily, on this point, we are not left without the means 
of knowing what was the intent of the framers of the consti- 
tution in adopting the article in question. We find from Mr. 
Madison's report of the debates had in the convention, that 
the view we have taken of it is the correct one. The arti- 
cle was originally designed to meet the contingency that was 
foreseen as likely to happen of the formation of new States 
within the limits of the territory of the Union. Among the 
propositions brought forward by Mr. Edmund Randolph at 
the outset, which propositions are well known to have em- 
braced the principles ultimately incorporated into the consti- 
tution, the tenth runs in the following words : — 

Resolved, That provision ought to be made for the admission of States 
lawfully arising within the limits of the United States, whether from a vol- 
untary junction of government and territory, or otherwise, with the con- 
sent of a number of voices in the National Legislature less than the 
■whole. 

It will be seen at once what the intention was in introduc- 
ing this proposition at all. It was not to enlarge the system 
by the incorporation into it of foreign States, but to open a 
way for the preservation of the existing territorial rights of 
the Union, without the necessity of including them within the 
limits of the existing States, 'i'his would have been incon- 
venient, by reviving the difficult questions that had once 
been settled by the voluntary act of the States, claiming the 
territories at the westward, which had been induced to sur- 
render their claims for the common good, 'i'he States to 
be admitted were only those which might lawfully arise unlhin 
the limits of the United States. There is no ambiguity in 
this language, whatever. Accordingly, we find that in this 
very language the tenth proposition of Mr. Randolph was on 
the 5th of June, 1787, adopted by the convention, and made 
the basis of the article upon the subject. In this form, it, 
together with the rest of the propositions that had been 
agreed to, was referred to the committee of detail, appointed 



35 

on the 24th of July, with powers to report a constitution in 
form. At the same time, however, the independent proposi- 
tions that had then been offered by Mr. Charles Pinckney 
and Mr. Patterson, were referred to the same committee, 
probably with a view to give that committee full powers to 
make such modifications in the language of the new instru- 
ment as might appear advisable and best, after a full compar- 
ison of all the plans with each other. It must be noted, that 
Mr. Pinckney 's article 14th, runs in the following words : — 

The Legislature shall have power to admit new States into the Union, 
on the same terms with the original States; •provided two-thirds of the 
members present in both Houses agree. 

Mr. Patterson's was still more concise. 

Resolved, That provision be made for the admission o? new States into 
the Union. 

Now, by a comparison of these two propositions with that 
of Mr. Randolph, it will immediately be perceived that the 
former intends to provide for the same contingency with the 
latter, and that the difference is only in the shorter form of 
expressing the same idea. ]Mr. Randolph proposed,, that 
"provision ought to be made for the admission of States law- 
fully arising within the limits of the United States.''^ The 
other two gentlemen describe the same communities as "new 
States," and cut off the circumlocution. Had not this been 
their motive, how much easier would it have been to have 
said other States, or foreign States, as Mr. Sherman actually 
did in a proposition we shall presently notice. This would 
indeed have expressed the idea now advanced by Mr. Walk- 
er, but it was not the one which they intended to express. 
They were looking to the Western Territory with as single 
an eye as Mr. Randolph. 

We have stated these facts, to show how the word "new" 
came to be incorporated into the present article of the consti- 
tution. This and the provision requiring a two-thirds vote 
were borrowed by the committee of detail, from the propo- 
sitions of Messrs. Pinckney and Patterson, in order fully to 
carry out the idea presented by Mr. Randolph. The seven- 
teenth article, as reported by them on the sixth of August, is 
in the following words : — 

New States lawfully constituted or established within the limits of the 
United States maybe admitted, by the Legislature, into this govern- 
ment; but to such admission the consent of two thirds of the members 
present in each house shall be necessary. If a new State shall arise 
within the limits of any of the present Stateo, the consent of the Legi.sla- 
tures of such States shall be also necessary to its admission. If the ad- 
mission be consented to, the new State shall be admitted on the same 
terms with the original States. But the Legislature may make condi- 
tions with the new States, concerning the public debt which shall then 
be subsisting. 



3Q 

It will be perceived that this form of the article only made 
still more striking the intention of the framers of tiie constitu- 
tion to limit its application to communities which might there- 
after be formed tcithin the limits of the Union. In this view 
it is, that the incorporation into it of the word "new," which 
was not in Mr. Randolph's original proposition, is of great 
consequence. We now come to consider the reasons why 
this proposition, as reported by the committee of detail, was 
subsequently modified into the shape in which it now stands. 
We think it can be made evident that the change was not de- 
signed to favor any projects of enlargement of the Union, to 
say the least of it. It appears that on the 29th of August, 
when the article came before the convention for consid- 
eration, Mr. Gouverneur Morris objected to it in its new 
shape, because it made the admission of the Western States 
upon equal terms with the original States, imperative, with 
a single exception, relative to the public debt then subsisting. 
"He did not wish to throw power into the hands of the 
Western country." These are his words, as reported by 
Mr. Madison. Hence it is to be inferred, that he wished to 
retain, in the hands of the Congress, the ability to make con- 
ditions of admission even to those new communities about to 
be formed within the limits of the Union ; the very principle 
contended for, by the Northern States, it should be observed, 
at the time of the admission of Missouri. Not being satis- 
fied with the article as it stood, he proposed the following as 
a substitute : — 

JVeio States may be admitted by the Legislature into the Union ; but 
no new States shall be erected within the limits of any of the present 
States, without the consent of the Legislature of such State, as well as 
of the general Legislature. 

And this substitute being nearly the same thing with the 
article, as it actually stands, was adopted, six States voting 
in favor, and five against it. 

The position of Vermont, a territory at that time neither 
in nor out of the Union, and seeking to be admitted without 
the necessity of securing the consent of New York, appears 
to have had a great effect upon the form in which this arti- 
cle was ultimately adopted. Luckily, her situation has given 
us a strong proof of a cumulative character how much im- 
portance the framers of the constitution attached to the word 
"ncio," as joined to "States," in the connexion of this ar- 
ticle. Mr. Sherman moved the following substitute, which 
distinctly covers the ground assumed by Mr. Walker, in his 
pamphlet : — 

The Legislature shall have power to admit other States into the Union ; 
and new States to be formed by the division or junction of States now 
in the Union, with the consent of the Legislature of such States. 



37 

This substitute adopts the word '■'■ other'' ^ instead of the 
word "new," and, still more significantly, it opposes it to the 
word " new" that follows, as applied to the creation of States 
to be formed by dividing or uniting existing States. It can, 
therefore, hardly be doubted, that this was considered as test- 
ing the sense of the convention upon the article as it stands. 
The substitute was designed to include a ])ower of admitting 
other States, whether old or new. The article, as it stands, 
confined itself to future communities about to be formed in 
the forests of the West. How much force is then due to the 
decision of the convention which rejected the substitute, six 
States voting in the negative, to five in the affirmative, and 
then adopted the article as proposed by Mr. Morris, eight 
States voting in favor, and three against it ! 

We are conscious how very dry all merely constitutional 
questions are to the great mass of readers. We have, there- 
fore, endeavored to condense this history much more than is 
altogether to the advantage of the argument. So conclusive, 
however, does the view of it which we have taken seem to us 
that we are willing to let it go even in its present shape, with- 
out any further amplification. We trust, that after this the 
public will no longer listen to any pretence of power to be 
derived under this article, at least, for the annexation of a 
foreign State to the Union. If the act is to be done at all, it 
is surely not to be done by men sworn to support the consti- 
tution, in the face of a distinct declaration of its sense, by 
those who were engaged in its construction. 

The last of the three modes by which Mr. Walker thinks 
that the annexation may be effected, is through the act of any 
one of the States of the Union, with the sanction of Con- 
gress. He derives this remarkable power not from any 
direct authority given in the constitution, but by implication 
from that clause of the tenth section of the first article, which 
forbids any State from entering into any agreement or com- 
pact with another State, or with a foreign power, without 
having the consent of Congress thereto. But if this consent 
can be obtained, he thinks the power to make such a com- 
pact remains in the States unaffected by the prohibition, and 
that under cover of these words " compact or agreement," 
any one of them may, at its pleasure, merge into itself, or be 
merged into any foreign State. 

This is, to say the least of it, a new view of the constitution 
of the United States. So far as the annexation of Texas is 
concerned, we regard it as presenting the least dangerous 
mode of effecting it which has yet been suggested ; and could 



38 

we for a moment be brought to assent to the vahdity of the 
reasoning by which it is pressed, we are not sure that we 
should be afraid of running the risk of its happening by this 
means. But, were the scheme practicable, — were the State 
of Louisiana or of Arkansas willing to sink its present organ- 
ization, for the purpose of embracing Texas within its limits, 
no one knows better than Mr. Walker, that the main object 
of the whole undertaking would thereby be defeated. The 
purpose of annexing Texas, is to create out of it several new 
States, each of which shall have the benefit of the rule of 
federal representation, as well in the Senate as in the House 
of Representatives. And through this division into States, 
the object is to gain just so many more electoral votes for 
President and Vice-President, with which to defend the rep- 
resentation of property in man, as there would be new mem- 
bers of the Senate thus obtained. Now, were Texas incor- 
porated into Louisiana or Arkansas, no more Senators could 
be made than now exist ; and the struggle against Wisconsin 
and Iowa, and all the rest of the Western Territory would 
remain to be made as now. The Senate is, after all, the 
stronghold of property representation in this government, be- 
cause there, the inequality between the increase of the free 
and the slave States does not operate to restore the balance 
in favor of the former, as it does in the popular branch, and 
in the electoral colleges. Nothing can shake that power in 
the Senate, if it be once fortified by the addition of Texas as 
a territory. But its union with one of the existing States 
would not strengthen it in that body materially. We cannot, 
therefore, avoid the conviction, that this third mode of annex- 
ing Texas to the Union is not intended to be seriously re- 
commended, and that it has rather been thrown out as a pos- 
sibility, in case of the failure of the other two, than with any 
serious belief that it could be made acceptable, either to the 
State which would be swallowed up in the operation, or to 
the interest ostensibly to be promoted by it. 

But, even were it otherwise — were the whole of the party 
in favor of annexation to press it as a proper measure, we 
must maintain that the scheme is directly and palpably at war 
with existing provisions of the constitution, which absolutely 
forbid every attempt of the kind. Mr. Walker, in his zeal 
for annexation, appears to have looked only at the last clause 
of the tenth section, under which he derives his power, and 
to have neglected the first. Yet, what are the words of the 
first .'' Are they not these ? 

" No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or con- 
federation." 



39 

The prohibition is absolute. No State can even set on 
foot a negotiation with Texas, without at once violating her 
obligations to the Union. Indeed, how could it be other- 
wise ? What power of control would there be in the gov- 
ernment of the United States over the foreign relations of the 
country, if this clause were not in the constitution ? The 
provision which follows forbidding the States to enter into any- 
compact or agreement with another State or with a foreign 
power, without the consent of Congress, manifestly has refer- 
ence to certain cases of extreme necessity ; it by no means 
conflicts with the clause which we have quoted. This may 
easily be seen by noting the context, much of which has ref- 
erence only to a state of war. " No State," it says, " shall 
without the consent of Congress, lay any duly of tonnage, 
keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any 
agreement or compact with another State or a foreign pow- 
er, or engage in war unless actually invaded or in such immi- 
nent danger as will not admit of delay." Some of these 
powers may not be exercised at all excepting by consent of 
Congress, and others may be exercised upon certain contin- 
gencies of war, without that consent, but they are all of a 
character which cannot and ought not to be resorted to ex- 
cepting in cases in which it is clear that the States must 
do so for some very strong and peculiar reason. This 
seems to be the cause of the difference of the language used 
in this and in the first clause of the same section already 
quoted. " No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or 
confederation" whatever, upon any terms, with or without 
the consent of Congress — but it may, with such consent, enter 
into " a compact or agreement" with another State or a for- 
eign power, that is, some arrangement justified by extreme 
necessity, either for mutual defence or for protection, mak- 
ing it an exception to the general rule of action, temporary 
in its nature, and having no sort of reference to plans of 
enlargement or of dominion in time of peace, like that which 
Mr. Walker has attempted to introduce under the words. 

But apparently aware that none of the three modes thus 
suggested are free from the difficulties which we have endea- 
vored to point out, this gentleman is ready, with a new and 
more general position, to meet the contingency of his fail- 
ure to prove them constitutional. He maintains, though it 
must be confessed, in language somewhat ambiguous, the ex- 
istence of a reserved right in any State, to extend her terri- 
tory as far as she pleases, without regard to the constitution. 
As we desire not to misrepresent him on so delicate a point, 
we will copy his own words. 



40 

" But," he says, " if it be otlierwise, and tlie constitution only applies 
to territories then attached to the Union, and delegates no power for 
the acquisition of any other territory, nor prohibits the exercise of the 
pre-existino- power of each State, to extend her boundaries, then there 
would remain in each State the reserved right of extension, beyond t/ie 
control of Congress, 1 have not asserted the existence of such a right in 
a State; but if the clauses quoted, do net confer the autliority on Con- 
gress, and the re-annexation is refused on that ground, then tlie annex- 
ing power, as a right to enlarge their boundaries, would result to any 
one of the States, and with the consent of Texas, could be exercised. 
Perceiving, then, what pdwer results to the States, from the denial of the 
power of annexation by Congress, let us agitate no such qviestion in ad- 
vance of a denial of its own authority by Congress, but discuss the ques- 
tion on its merits alone." 

It is quite well for Mr. Walker, that he does not assert 
the existence of the right here spoken of — and that, for the 
very good reason, that no such right can, by any possibility, 
be made to consist with the maintenance of the relative po- 
sition of the Stales, under the constitution. If a right to 
enlarge her boundaries, can result to one of the States, 
by the annexing power, it does equally to all. Rhode Island 
and Delaware have far more reasonable ground for the exer- 
cise of it, than either Louisiana or Arkansas. The only 
question for consideration then would be, where the land 
should be found, to which to apply this annexing power. It 
cannot be found within the territory of ihe Union, because 
that is regarded as common property of all the States. 
Neither can it be found without that territory, because the 
consent of the owners must then be obtained, these owners 
being foreign States. This can only be done by negotiation 
and treaty. And the constitution expressly declares, as we 
have already shown, that "No State shall enter into any 
treaty." The original object of this provision is well under- 
stood". If it had not existed, the poor Indians would have 
been stripped of all their lands, by the States, long before 
the United States did it for them. The tenth section of the 
first article contains an enumeration of the powers denied to 
the States, and the treaty-making power is one of them. 
Can any thing in language be plainer .'' And yet there is an 
indistinct intimation in this passage, by Mr. Walker, of a 
reserved right, which looks so much to us like a threat, that 
"if we cannot do this thing one way, we will another — if we 
cannot do it constitutionally, we will do it whether or no," 
that it needs explanation. Now we have never for a moment 
doubted, that there was a disposition in some quarters, to vi- 
olate the constitution, rather than to fail of securing Texas 
— but we scarcely expected to find a Senator of the Unit- 
ed States even hint at such a thing. We hope we have 
misconceived his meaning in this instance. But if we have 



41 

not, and this doctrine is to be acted on, what is the con- 
stitution worth ? Is every barrier to be broken down which 
prevents the unhmited exercise of power by those who will 
perpetuate their own privileges, at the expense of those of 
the nation ? Are there to be no rights secured, excepting 
those of unequal representation ? 

But if Mr. Walker and his friends turn round upon us and 
ask us whether, under no circumstances whatever, we would 
consent to the junction of Texas with the United States, 
and whether some attention is not due to the argument drawn 
from the too great proximity of the Sabine to the city of New 
Orleans, we are perfectly ready to answer these questions. 
The only legitimate method of deciding the matter is, by an 
appeal to the people of the United States, who agreed to the 
constitution as it is. Let Mr. Walker, propose an amend- 
ment to that constitution which shall cover this question ; 
let that amendment be approved by the requisite number, 
two-thirds of both Houses of Congress, arid ratified by the 
Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, and then 
Texas may become a part of the United States. We will 
venture to go even a step further to meet him — we will our- 
selves advocate the annexation of Texas in the manner 
here described, provided only that the same amendment 
which shall authorize it be made to include the substance 
of the Massachusetts resolutions. Not that we desire to 
be understood as favoring the further acquisition of terri- 
tory to the Union, in any shape, or that we wave any of the 
objections we have made to the admission of Texas. But 
we should be willing to put up with something in the way 
of evil for the sake of securing a greater good. And holding 
as we do the most sincere and deliberate conviction, that the 
compromise of the constitution which concedes the right of 
repi esentation of property in man has been, is, and will be, if 
continued, fatal to all the good objects for which that consti- 
tution was originally formed and that it is degrading the United 
States from the high |)lace in the scale of nations and in the 
eyes of mankind wliich it ought to fill, we would not for our 
own part hesitate to make a small sacrifice which should re- 
move from -that instrument the greatest spot upon its beauty. 
Let Texas and the Massachusetts resolutions then go out to- 
gether, and let them take their fate together, for weal or woe, 
in the ratifying bodies, as provided by the constitution. This 
is the only lawful mode of arriving at a good result. Every 
other that has been proposed, in connexion with Texas is 
equivalent to a dissolution of the existing social compact, — 
because it entirely subverts the original relations subsisting 

G 



42 

between the people of the several States ; it subjects them 
to the influence of new parties to the compact, introduced 
without their consent, and against their will ; it arrogates for 
the executive and legislative departments of the government 
a dangerous power, never intended to be granted to them ; 
and finally, it perpetuates the privileges conceded to a few, 
at the expense of those advantages which the preamble to 
the constitution declares it was its purpose to secure to all. 

But there are persons to be found in the free States, inde- 
pendently of the office-holders, who now, chameleon-like, 
ahva}s take the color of their master, and of the speculators 
who hold Texas scrip or Texas lots, who aflect to regret the 
alternative which they present to our rejection of Texas, 
namely, that Texas will then fall to England. There are 
others who consider this rejection as equivalent to the loss of 
a great market for our manufactures. Mr. Walker has struck 
both of these chords with some effect, in his pamphlet. He 
has not been sparing of appeals to the national pride, as well 
as to the individual purse. And in every community of free 
persons, some will be found to respond to the one call, and 
many to the other. All we beg of them in this case is, not 
to suffer themselves to become dupes. Surely, this new- 
born zeal in favor of domestic manufactures is somewhat sur- 
prising, coming as it does from men who have uniformly, 
heretofore, shown the most steadfast hostility to their protec- 
tion. Surely this enmity to England is rather singular in a 
party which has shown a determination, for years back, to 
make this country tributary to her in every deparment of in- 
dustry, except the raising of cotton. The only practical ef- 
fect of the annexation of Texas would be, to give additional 
strci:'gth to those who are now seeking to destroy the taritT, 
and to renew our ancient state of dependence on Great Brit- 
ain for our manufactures. For if we look back to the his- 
tory of the past, do we not see that the interest which has 
most steadily and pertinaciously resisted the principle of pro- 
tection to home manufactures, has been the cotton planting 
interest ? And what is there in Texas but cotton planting ? 
Who is it that con)j)lains that cotton pays all the revenues of 
the government ? Is it not South Carolina .'' Who is it 
that even now makes the destruction of the present tariff a 
condition of adherence to the democratic party ? Is it not 
Mr. John C. Calhoun ? And do not South Carolina and 
Mr. John C. Calhoun now seek for sympathy and coopera- 
tion in the annexation of Texas ? Let no one, then, be so 
simple as to believe that the manufacturers of the country will 
be aided by strengthening the hands of their bitterest enemies. 



43 

With respect to the other pretence, that Texas, if rejected 
by the United States, will become a dependency of Great 
Britain, we shall be ready to believe that just as soon as we 
see the people of Texas emancipate their slaves, and not be- 
fore. And we think this about as probable, as that the same 
thing will be done by the people of Alabama or Mississippi. 
As long as cotton planting is profitable, just so long will there 
be a demand for slaves ; and as long as there is a demand for 
slaves, just so long will the people of Texas stick to slavery- 
Great Britain neither can nor will interfere with her any more 
than she does with us. She may seek to make favorable 
treaties with her ; but what is to prevent our doing likewise ? 
If Texas is to be a market for manufactured goods, why not 
for ours as well as for die British ? New-Orleans is a great 
deal nearer to it than Liverpool. And our people may be 
trusted to make full use of every fair advantage they can ob- 
tain. Our manufactures now go to Mexico. Why should 
not they go to a State much less likely to interpose useless 
and vexatious restraints to trade ? 

In truth, the independence of Texas is, of all things, that 
which it is most for the interest of the Union to sustain. If 
our government ever had done such a thing, it might almost 
be advisable for it to enter into negotiation with Mexico 
and Great Britain, mutually to guarantee that independence. 
In this manner, she might be n)ade a barrier between the tur- 
bulent part of our boundary population on the Southwest and 
the Mexicans. Even the slave-owners of the South would 
find it for their advantage to have a State on their border 
which would deter, by its legislation, their slaves from flight. 
For were Texas to be joined to the Union, we are willing to 
believe that Mr. Walker's conjectuie would be just, as to 
the tendency of the colored population, by escape, to diffuse 
itself over the neighboring free territory of Mexico ; but I 
greatly doubt whether he or his friends would then look upon 
the operation with the same degree of complacency which he 
now affects. If that idea was thrown out as a bait to the 
friends of negro emancipation, to favor annexation, we very 
much doubt whether it has caught a single one, even of the 
simplest of them. 

But the subject has so grown under our hands that we find 
ourselves compelled from fear of fatiguing those who may do 
us the favor to examine our views, to abandon the intention 
of pursuing Mr. Walker through all his arguments in favor of 
annexation. We are the more ready to do this, because we 
find the few that remain unnoticed, are not likely to carry 
nmch weight in their minds. The dangers which this gen- 



44 

tleman predicts to follow to the free States from the aboli- 
tion of slavery, in "making their vessels rot at the wharves 
for want of exchangeable products to carry, and the grass to 
grow in the streets of their cities," probably for the same 
reason, make a fine paragraph for declamation, but they only 
betray the utter ignorance of the writer, of the resources of 
freemen. Really, one would be led to imagine, from his 
tone, that the world would be undone if there were no cotton 
in Charleston, Mobile, Natchez and New Orleans. All this is 
a bugbear, much of the same species with the raw head and 
bloody bones stories which used to be told previous to the 
emancipation of the slaves in the English West Indies. 
Whatever may be the danger of emancipation to the slave 
States, Mr. Walker may rest assured that the free States ap- 
prehend no serious consequence to them, other than those 
which might follow the obligations which the constitution im- 
poses, of protecting their brethen against insurrection at 
home. Moreover, they would be somewhat at a loss to 
understand how this argument against emancipation, is to be 
made to reconcile them to the dangers of an indefinite exten- 
sion of the evils of slavery over a large additional territory, 
and a consequent increase of those hazards of insurrection, 
which would call for the interference of the federal govern- 
ment, j)artially at their expense. If Mr. Walker thinks that 
slavery is much better than freedom to the black, then let 
him prove it to be a measure of wisdom and philanthropy to 
reestablish it all over the Union. This may suit that gen- 
tleman's moral and social theories, but it will meet few sup- 
porters among the free. 

So, too, with his elaborate argument drawn from the cen- 
sus '^f 1840, to prove how badly freedom suits the black. 
According to Mr. Walker, it has a peculiar tendency to make 
him insane, and he thereupon endeavors to show how great a 
proportion of free blacks become mad, as contrasted with the 
whites. If this position be true the corollary necessarily fol- 
lows, that if these blacks had been slaves, they would have 
been in their right mind. It is their freedom that halh made 
them mad. Tliis argument, as coming from despotic gov- 
ernments, and applied to the excesses of democracy, as ex- 
emplified in the French revolution, is not a new one ; but 
when it comes from the Senator from Mississippi, one of the 
chief lights of modern democracy, in 1S44, in the United 
States, it is calculated to raise a smile of surprise. The true 
line between sanity and insanity is among the problems of 
medical science. We will not ask the Senator how far we may 
be justified in considering the white people of his State sane, 



45 

in their reasoning on the subject of the moral obligation of a 
Slate to fulfil its contracts, for we seek to revive no unpleasant 
recollections. Let us rather proceed at once to deny the ac- 
curacy of his statistics. It is notorious that the census of 
1840 contains most ridiculous errors, upon which this theory 
of the insanity of the free black is founded. Mr. Severance 
of Maine has shown, in a late speech in Congress, how in six 
towns in his State nineteen insane blacks were returned, 
whilst at the same time the sum of all the colored people in 
those same towns was only one, and he was probably sane. 
This will serve as an example of the whole foundation of Mr. 
Walker's argument. And such is the sophistry which re- 
spectable men are not ashamed to use, when they are com- 
pelled to defend slavery against the doctrines of the Declara- 
tion of Independence. It may answer for the meridian of 
Carroll County, Kentucky, to which place Mr. Walker's 
letter was originally addressed,, but it will not stand the test 
of a moment's scrutiny in the free States particularly when it 
is pressed as a justification of the annexation of Texas. 

Let us, then, pass over all this stuff, as not worthy of the 
})aper it would cost to refute it, and come at once to the great 
question that agitates all minds. 

WHAT OUGHT NOW TO BE DONE ? 

It must be admitted diat public opinion, in the free States, 
has not settled down into any definite channel on this subject. 
We approach the consideration of it with great diffidence ; 
not that we do not see a way by which the consummation of 
this project might be prevented, but that we fear the state of 
feeling in the country is not sufticiently concentrated to secure 
its adoption. Yet the late election in the city of New York 
clearly shows what can be done when the people have made 
up their minds to reform an existing evil. We will only ap- 
ply the principle there involved on a larger scale, and then 
leave the decision of this great question to those in whose 
hands it legitimately belongs. 

But first, it may be as well to state the whole extent of the 
evil which we have to apprehend, and which we desire to 
avoid. The annexation of Texas is, in itself, an evil; but it 
Is by no means the whole of it. Every one in the conununity 
knows, that it is carried on at this time, in the face of hostile 
declarations made by Mexico, a country with which we are 
at peace. If Texas be, then, a part of "the settled policy 
of the government," as Mr Llolmes says, so must also be a 
war with Mexico, which is to follow it. Neither is this quite 
all. At the same time that these hostilities are provoked, a 
spirit is manifesting itself in both Houses of Congress, calcu- 



46 

lated to excite America against Great Britain. This has os- 
tensibly for its basis, the question between the two countries 
about the boundary of the Oregon Territory, but it is strictly 
connected with ihe nnovemcnt to gain Texas, and has for its 
real purpose the protection of slavery against the effect of 
public opinion in England, and the other States of Christen- 
dom. Here, then, is the backward step of liberty in the new 
hemisphere. Here, then, is the check to further progress, 
administered by ihe haughty spirit engendered out of slavery, 
and determined to maintain its special privileges at every haz- 
ard. The settled policy of the United States is to be defi- 
ance of the world. The black flag is to go up to the mast 
head, whilst we seize Texas with one hand and Oregon with 
the other, and proclaim our readiness to strike at the city of 
Mexico, hereafter. And the free States are to be crippled 
in their commerce and drained of their wealth, to sustain this 
new crusade in support of the new democratic principle, now 
proclaimed in America, that " all men are not born free and 
equal," whilst the slightest complaint or remonstrance is to be 
branded as the heresy of men bribed and bought by JNlexican 
or British gold. 

In order to promote mad schemes like these, it was one of 
the fancies of the person now called the lamented Upshur, 
but whose loss as a politician, to the country, is by no means 
to be lamented, whatever may be the share of regret felt for 
him as a man ; it was one of the fancies of this gentleman, to 
bring up the navy and army of the United States at once to 
a war footing, so as to enable the country as soon as possible 
to cope wiih Great Britain. Extravagant appropriations 
were recommended in all quarters, by an administration pro- 
fessing to follow the Jellersonian model of economy, and we 
were about to have a magnificent government, to give splen- 
dor to the accident which was placed at its head. Luckily 
for the country, some wisdom and discretion was yet left 
in the House of Representatives, which put a stopper upon 
these visions of glory for the time, but the system yet remains, 
and will probably be still pressed in parts, as opportunity may 
offer, now that it is not probable it will ever be accepted as 
a whole. But it behoves the people to be on the watch, or 
else that armament which was made the forerunner of events, 
will only have changed its place in the order of time, and will 
be made necessary as a consequence of them. 

J3ut the question recurs — How shall we act most effec- 
tively both for the preservation of peace and against the set- 
tled policy here marked out ? 

There have been suggestions of the expediency of extra- 
ordinary popular meetings, State conventions, and one gen- 



47 

eral convention of delegates from all the Free States. As 
expressions of opinion, these would perhaps be useful, but as 
guiding a course of action, they might possibly do more 
harm than good. The tendency of such assemblages is to 
extreme violence, which defeats its own end, and there is no 
need of that now. If the people really feel the necessity of ex- 
erting themselves, they may do it most effectually by con- 
centrating in the regular and customary forms. If, on the 
other hand, they do not, it is useless for a part to attempt 
declarations of what they feel, which the whole will not by 
action sustain. The Free States yet have the control of this 
matter in their hands. If they say no, the thing cannot be 
done. If, on the other hand, they show themselves willing, 
or even lukewarm and indifferent, it will be done. In either 
event, the responsibility of sustaining or defeating the valua- 
ble purposes of the constitution of the United States rests 
with them. 

And in considering what dangers are most to be appre- 
hended, we have very reluctantly been driven to the conclu- 
sion, that the most imminent of them springs from the cold 
and temporizing policy of Mr. Van Buren, and his organiza- 
tion of political management in the Free States. And we 
draw this inference iTot merely from the fact that the opposi- 
tion to the twenty -first rule of the House of Representatives, 
made so late in the day by his friends, has been basely aban- 
doned ; nor yet from the fact that three Legislatures of the 
great States of New York, Pennsylvania, and Maine, friendly 
to him have distinctly refused to express even an opinion 
against the policy of annexing Texas ; nor yet from the fact 
that a New Hampshire Senator, of his party, has expressed 
himself friendly to that policy ; nor yet from the fact that the 
influential press of the democratic party in the free States, 
with a few exceptions, is either silent or friendly to it ; nor 
yet from the fact that many of those who are the most violent 
against Great Britain in Congress, about the Oregon Territory, 
are among the most active of his party, and are also playing 
into the hands of the Texans. We say that we do not draw 
our inference from any one of these facts by itself but by put- 
ting them all together we deem it irresistible. The principles 
of liberty, the hopes of peace, and of an honest adtninistration 
are not safely to be "trusted in the hands of men who make a 
trade of politics — who bargain one thing against another — and 
who are finally ready to sell every thing, rather than not to 
gain possession of power. Lukewarmness now^ at this critical 
moment, in a citizen of the most powerful of the free States, 
is symptomatic of treachery hereafter. Let no such men be 



48 

trusted. We are perfectly convinced that the first great step 
to security, will be the defeat of Mr. Van Buren's election to 
the Presidency, or of any other democratic candidate for that 
office that may be named from the Free States, who is not 
unequivocally pledged to resist this Texan policy. 

But how can this be done ? A struggling scattering vote 
for third persons will not do it. And Mr. Clay will be the can- 
didate, in all probability, of the opposing party. We are aware 
of the fact that Mr. Clay is not publicly pledged on the subject 
— that he is himself a slave-holder, tied to the favored class 
by common interests and sympathies, and that he has in for- 
mer days favored the acquisition of Texas, when it was an un- 
occupied territory, by lawful means. Is it to be supposed 
that elevating him will place us in a better situation than if we 
sustained the democratic candidate ? 

We will frankly admit that there are difficulties all round. 
We have not ourselves been among those who have mani- 
fested any desire to support Mr. Clay. Probably he himself 
would not have thanked us if we had made the offer, and 
would now deem his prospect of success better without such 
support. But personal considerations weigh not with us a 
feather, in estimating the value of the various modes now open 
of avoiding the evils by which we are surrounded. In the great 
movements of this world, which no one can hope to control 
exactly as he would like, the part of wise men is to extract 
from much that appears unfavorable, whatever portion is like- 
ly, under the circumstances, to yield the greatest amount of 
good. We have seen no evidence to convince us that what- 
ever may have been Mr. Clay's view of a lawful acquisition 
of this territory formerly, he now approves of it after the 
conduct of government has so complicated the question. 
Nor is it alone the fact that the Legislatures of the two 
slaveholding States, Tennessee and Kentucky, friendly to 
Mr. Clay, have refused to favor the annexation of Texas at 
this time ; nor the fact that his friends, and the newspapers 
most warmly enlisted in his cause, are many of them opposed 
to it, which induces us to overcome our scruples, in support- 
ing him for the sake of defeating Mr. Van Buren. Very for- 
tunately for us, there is another test yet remains behind, 
which must settle our opinions definitively on one side or the 
other, in this "matter. A treaty on our part with Texas, 
which joins the two countries, without consulting the people 
of the United States, and hardly with their knowledge of the 
fact that it has been in the process of negotiation, is at this 
moment before the Senate for confirmation or rejection. 
It is well known that a majority of that body is of the party 



49 

friendly to the election of Mr. Clay as President. If they 
choose to say the word, that treaty will be declared to be 
the law of the land, and the outrage will be consunnmated — 
for after the various indications of sentiment to which we 
have alluded, we have little faith in the resistance of the dem- 
ocratic part of the body. If, on the other hand, they do not 
say the word, the treaty falls back upon its authors and con- 
trivers — a mere piece of waste paper. 

" By those fruits, ye shall know hiin." 

If, as appears to us most probable, that treaty should be 
rejected, still it may be done on the ground, not of the un- 
constitutional character of the act itself, but because the peo- 
ple of the United States have not had any opportunity to ex- 
press an opinion, in favor of, or against it. tSuch might, by 
possibility, be the reasoning of Mr. Clay himself. We know 
nothing of his opinions, and only assume these to be his, be- 
cause it is putting the most unfavorable view of them that we 
may be called upon to meet. Although we should more 
highly value that opposition to Texas, which should spring 
from convictions as strong as our own of the utter unconsti- 
tutionality of the proposed act of union, we ought not to suffer 
ourselves to underrate the advantages which may be derived, 
even from the ground which is thus presented to us. So 
long as the people of the Free States are not bargained away 
like cattle ; so long as their voice is to be respected by those 
hi power, in guiding the policy of the government, there is 
yet room for hope. The admission of this principle alone, 
would be a prognostic of a return to brighter days. There 
has been none such acted upon, for a great many years, by 
those who have been placed in the administration. 

But in order to make this concession of any avail, it w^ill 
be necessary for those citizens of all parties, who value the 
perpetuity of our pacific and free system of government more 
than the success of individuals in iheir pursuit of office, to 
direct their attention to the choice of men perfectly true to sound 
principles in both branches of the federal Legislature. No 
President will have it in his power, hereafter, to do the mis- 
chief which Mr. Tyler has had an opportunity to do, if the 
proper precautions be only taken. It will be wise to put re- 
straints on him, in this particular, whoever may be the success- 
ful aspirant. This can be done. The only question is, shall 
it be done ? We scarcely expect that the ultras of either of 
the three parties will be prepared to abandon their standard for 
any useful purpose whatever, that may conflict with the pro- 
bability of their own ascendency. But the great mass of the 



50 

moderate and substantial jieople of the community, who hold 
the balance of power between them, are not so wedded to 
any interest as to be unwilling to listen to reason, and of them 
we do expect all that may yet be done to redeem the coun- 
try. To this end, it is not absolutely necessary that they 
should at once break from the political association with which 
they ordinarily act. Let them wait to sec who the candi- 
dates may be that the opposite parties will put up. If it shall 
turn out that they are all not only known to be decidedly op- 
posed to the whole policy of annexation and war, but pos- 
sess sufficient weight of private character to secure them 
from the suspicion of a liability to improper influence here- 
after, then it is immaterial for which of them any one may 
vote, so far as this question is concerned. The election 
of either would secure the great point now at issue. If, 
on the other hand, the candidate of only one of the parties is 
of the character described, whilst that of the other is either 
lukewarm or wavering, or not to be trusted, then is it the 
bounden duty of every person interested in the preservation 
of our institutions in their purity, to vote for the former, no 
matter what may be the standard he is attached to. And 
lastly, if the candidate presented by neither party is deserv- 
ing of public trust at this crisis, then it becomes highly neces- 
sary to do, as has lately been done, for different reasons, in 
the city of New York, to rally upon some new individual, 
whose character shall at once challenge the confidence of the 
voters, without regard to the old forms of organization. In 
this manner, and in this only, can the great point be secured, 
of possessing a body of men from the Free States, who 
will stand together on this great foundation, no matter what 
else they may divide about. The moderate men, who will 
hold the balance of power in almost every congressional dis- 
trict, we might even say in almost every election in the au- 
tumn, can secure this great object, if they only will it. But it 
will be necessary for them to be on the alert. The elections 
will soon become a topic of public interest. In order to se- 
cure the right sort of candidates, it wmII be necessary that the 
requisites alluded to be early insisted upon. The field is now 
open for useful exertion. If it be not rightly improved, then 
w^ill there be an end of all chance of future security. The 
evil may now have been postponed, but it will not have been 
removed. If the Free States do not strongly will, then the 
inference wjll be drawn that they consent, and many of their 
own citizens will be among the first to sacrifice every public 
principle to the hope of personal advantage in promoting the 
Texas policy. 



51 

For let it be observed, that this is not a question for the 
present moment only. Some of the leading presses of the 
North have lately attempted to keep studiously out of view 
the subject that is at the bottom of it all. They appear to 
think that it is inexpedient to agitate matters which may affect 
the position of many Senators from the slave States, upon 
whose cooperation, to defeat the treaty now proposed to be 
made, we must rely. This argument would do very well, if 
the rejection of that treaty could be regarded as a final settle- 
ment of the question. But every one knows that it is not. 
Every one knows that those Senators do not mean to be un- 
derstood as pledging themselves beyond the occasion. Every 
one knows that their policy is more affected by their imme- 
diate interest in the success of Mr. Clay, which would be en- 
tirely destroyed by a contrary course, than by any permanent 
dislike to the Texas policy itself. How short-sighted is it, 
then to put the argument against it in the North on a false 
bottom, merely to please them, and subject ourselves to hav- 
ing the objection thrown into our teeth at some future time, 
that we had acted hypocritically, in suppressing the true rea- 
sons of our opposition, to serve a momentary purpose. This 
is the sort of temporising, timeserving policy, which too of- 
ten has the effect of weakening the influence of New-England 
in the national councils, much more than any extremes in 
doctrine which may be advanced. We are accused of trick, 
and management, and cunning — underhand ways of gaining 
our objects. Would it not be a clear justification of such a 
charge, to pretend that the indefinite expansion of slavery is 
not the great and leading objection in the minds of all good 
men among us, to the acquisition of Texas — provided that 
this could be done constitutionally. Would not that reason 
present the chief objection to the adoption of an amendment 
of the constitution, for the purpose of acquiring it ? How 
vain then to imagine, that by a little effort we can hide it from 
view. Does any one suppose that if Mr. Clay is chosen 
President, he will not be tried by his enemies at the South on 
this delicate subject, or that those who now support him will 
not be called upon to assume their ground, immediately after 
his election ? The present agitation of the project will itself 
be construed as furnishing some test of the popular sentiment 
in its favor, if that sentiment be not most unequivocally ex- 
pressed against it. Does any one imagine, that by a little delay 
the country will entirely avoid this issue? Would that we 
could believe it. ]^ut we strain our eyes, and see no such 
blessed futurity. The great issue between the principles of 
the constitution and slavery, between the rights of the many 



52 

freemen and the privileges of the k\v, must be met. The 
great problem of human progress is involved in the result. 
If there are men among us wlio feel faint-hearted, or wish to 
avert their eyes from the prospect, let them stand aside. 
But let them not deceive themselves with a belief, that with a 
few hollow phrases and delusive declarations, they can avert 
the struggle that is impending. Such efforts may put it off 
for a few hours or days, but they can do no more. 

How much this struggle will be accelerated, if the treaty 
now offered should be finally ratified by the Senate, we im- 
agine there is no one so cold as not to comprehend. Indeed, 
we have seen it gravely urged in some quarters, as a serious 
objection to it, not that its principle is much in its way, 
but that it would be giving the abolitionists too great an ad- 
vantage among our citizens. Such political morals are too 
common, even in the best of our newspaper press, to excite 
the least surprise. The abolitionists would long before this 
have made themselves an impregnable position, if they had 
been sufficiently prudent not to, connect with real and solid 
principles mucli that is irrelevant and impracticable. Expe- 
rience will, in the course of time, make them discreet, and 
the violent course of the Southern States, is daily con- 
tributing something to strengthen their arguments. The trim- 
ming and temporizing system that has marked the career 
of the race of politicians during the last twenty years, will 
no longer serve the purpose. The state of the country de- 
mands decision, and the public questions that are about 
to open before it and divide opinion, are likely to be of 
such a kind as to defy the possibility of equivocation. The 
only difficulty to be guarded against, by those who are driven 
to c(nitend against the increasing evils of slavery, is that 
which may arise from their own errors, in choosing unsafe 
ground upon which to make the contest. The best and 
strongest cause may be injured, if not destroyed, by mistak- 
ing the true methods to sustain it. 

This brings us to the last topic, which we proposed at the 
outset to treat. In the event of the annexation of Texas, 
what is it advisable for the free States to do ? Are they to 
submit to it, as an irremediable evil, and patiently await the 
results which it may bring about, or are they to do as some 
have advised — at once take measures to produce a dissolution 
of the Union ? In expressing our views upon this subject, 
we are conscious that we shall fall in with the notions of no 
particular party ; for whilst, on the one hand, we should 
deem the time come for an organization throughout the free 
States, such as has never yet been made ; on the other, we 



63 

should not deem It come for immediate dissolution. Not that 
we do not consider the bond of the constitution completely 
broken by the introduction of a foreign State, and its obliga- 
tion void. We have not a doubt on that point. But so long 
as we believe that it is within the power of the free States to 
prevent the annexation of Texas, and the war policy, if they 
only will it, just so long shall we consider their refusal so to 
will, as implying ihe waiver of the majority, to avail them- 
selves of the breach of contract at this time^ and iheir consent 
to remain in the Union for the present on unequal terms. Res- 
olutions and declamation are but waste of time, if the indomita- 
able spirit be not behind them to give force in action. The al- 
ternative is, then, to prepare for future events ; to disseminate 
the principles involved in the Massachusetts resolutions as 
striking at the root of the evil ; in short to make no cessation in 
the contest against slavery and the measures which flow from it. 
Gloomy though the prospect might be, of fulfilling the great 
ends for which the government was constituted, the perpetua- 
tion of the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity; 
desperate as might seem the prospect of a retiu'n to those 
days of honor and of peace, when the name of the republic 
had not been made a synonyme with rapacity and bad faith ; 
yet the duty of good citizens would still remain unchanged, to 
watch and to strive for the best. Rashness and despair are 
equally unmanly, so long as there is a shadow of faith re- 
maining in the dispensations of an overruling Providence 
above us. 

We have now done with the subject. In treating Jt, we 
are conscious that we have occasionally run counter to the 
prejudices and feelings of each of the three parties which now 
agitate the land. We have been too warm to suit those 
whigs, who delight in indifference ; too uncompromising to 
suit the flexible morality of the democrats ; and too cold to 
suit those abolitionists who dwell in abstractions. Such a re- 
sult almost inevitably follows any efibrt to express free 
thoughts in a free manner. Yet in all these parties there are 
numbers of persons who will not be displeased if such a lib- 
erty be taken, and who will examine the argument that may 
be advanced, with impartiality, and without reference to its 
source. To those persons we have endeavored most re- 
spectfully to address ourselves. They generally hold the 
scale in political affairs, and although slow in coming to the 
formation of opinions, yet when once formed they are tena- 
cious in maintaining them. Let the favored classes of the 
South beware how, by their violent career, they persist in driv- 
ing all these people into the doctrines of political abolitionism. 



54 

Thus far they have looked on perhaps with too much indif- 
ference, at the aggressions committed time after time upon the 
principles of hberty, and have given httle encouragement to 
the efforts of agitators. But a persistence in sacrificing the in- 
terests of the whole to the maintenance of an institution not 
to be justified either in the eyes of God or man, a resolute 
determination to press the country into a position before the 
world, at war both with its declared principles and with jus- 
tice and right, may try their patience somewhat beyond bear- 
ing. And the reaction in public opinion, consequent upon the 
outbreak of their indignation, may have effects upon the pol- 
icy of the Union and the condition of the slave States, which 
would hardly be compensated to the latter by the additional 
security they might fancy they had purchased to themselves, 
even by success in forcing the annexation of Texas. 




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